A Life Extraordinary
by MLP
Summary: Sick of the angst?  Want some happy ever after?  Let's have some Fun, fun, fun.  This story takes place in 2010 and regards Venus and Mars as canon.
1. Chapter 1

A LIFE EXTRAORDINARY

Chapter one; House Hunting

Marla Banks looked out the front window of her realtor's office and sighed. The petite blond coming up the front walk looked to be about twelve years old. Even the business suit and stylish short haircut couldn't hide her new client's extreme youth.

"They get younger every year, don't they?" she muttered to herself.

"No, Darling," said her partner, Elliot Clayton, as he walked through the outer office. "We're getting older. But don't let it get you down; you're still fabulous." He looked past Marla to the young lady approaching the front door. "My goodness. She's adorable."

"We were all adorable once; shopping for that first home, that first cozy little hideaway, thinking it would protect us from life…"

"Stop right there." Elliot warned. "You're supposed to sell the dream, not tank it. You are not some wicked has been; you're Miss Minnesota Runner Up 1982!"

"I was only Miss Mankato Runner Up, and it was 1985. But thanks for the vote of confidence."

"You will always be Miss America _1995_ to me. Now, get your game face on, she's here." As he spoke, the door swung open and the newest entrant to the home buyers market walked into their office.

"Hi!" the girl said to both Elliot and Marla "I called earlier. I'm your eleven O'clock appointment?"

"Of course you are!" Marla put out a hand. "It's so nice to meet you face to face, Mrs. Mars, is it? I'm Marla and this is Elliot. I'll be helping you today. Come on in."

She led the young woman into her large, sunny office and shut the door, arching one eyebrow at Elliot's smirking face.

"Please, have a seat." Marla invited. "Let's talk houses. You said on the phone that you're newly married?"

"Yes." The girl smiled fondly at the simple, tiny stone on her left hand. "My husband is still on the West coast. I was hoping to have narrowed the search a bit by the time he gets here."

"What brings you to the Twin Cities? Business or just good luck?"

"Both, I guess. I've been assigned to the St. Paul office and at first we were like 'what? Where?' But a quick Internet search had us both feeling pretty lucky. We had no idea how beautiful it is here."

"Well, don't tell anyone." Marla smiled, conspiratorially, "We kind of like having the reputation of winter wasteland. Keeps out the riff-raff."

"I'm actually looking forward to winter. I've never lived with snow." Mrs. Mars admitted. "A working fireplace is one of the things on my list."

"Lovely! What else is on that list? My job is so much easier when a client knows what she wants."

"Well, this is our first house, obviously." Mrs. Mars rummaged through her purse. "Oh crap. It's not here." The blond suddenly sat up. "Oh! I remember..." She reached into her jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Her jacket was only open a moment but long enough for Marla to gasp.

"Are…are you wearing a gun?" she blurted.

"Oh. Yes. Sorry. I came straight from the office; it's my lunch hour. Don't worry; I'm licensed." With that statement, the girl pulled out an ID badge and held it up.

"You're FBI?" Marla gaped. "Are they recruiting right out of high school these days? I'm …you look like you're about twenty!"

"I am a bit younger than the average rookie. I was part of a special program that fast tracked me through the academy training as part of my college credit. I'm really excited but it does add to the pressure to do well and not …stick out like a sore thumb."

"Well, you don't look like a sore thumb at all. That outfit looks wonderful on you."

"Does it? Thank you." Veronica Mars laughed. "I was kind of afraid the suit just screamed '_fed'. _I'm trying to strike a balance between 'professional' and 'cop'. It's not easy."

"You look fabulous." Marla said, looking her in the eye. "Extremely professional and I never would've guessed you were with the government. Welcome to Minneapolis. Is Mr. Mars also with the bureau?"

"No! No." she giggled. "He…hasn't quite figured out what he wants to do yet. Currently, he's running a website with a friend from college. I still don't know how they make any money but they seem to be doing okay. Best of all, he can do it from anywhere so he's happy to follow me wherever."

"Oh! How liberated of him! You're very fortunate."

"Thank you. I think so. My husband and I have a lot of ideas about what we want. The list isn't terribly long but certain things are non-negotiable."

"Like what?"

"Well, we want a house. Not a condo or a townhouse; a real house. I swear, I never want to live in an apartment again. My husband works at home, so something private and quiet. We would really love to be close to a lake. He loves water sports and they're so beautiful…"

"The lakes are the best part of town. I have to warn you, however; the closer you get to a lake, the more expensive the property. What did you say your husband does?"

"Ah...Internet stuff." Veronica really didn't want to try to describe Gradeyourass.

"Excellent! Have you been pre-approved for a home loan?"

"No. I seriously just got to town two days ago. I would really love to be able to surprise him with two or three real possibilities."

"Okay." Marla bit her lip, thinking. _What does a brand new federal agent make? __Not that much. How am I going to get these two kids close to a lake? I love a challenge. _She sat back in her chair. "You know, your timing couldn't be better. Five years ago, you couldn't get within a mile of a lake for under 400K but since the housing market tanked, homes that were getting a half a million in '07 are going for half that. They say it's an ill wind that doesn't blow some good and the collapse of the housing market has been a real boon to first time buyers like yourself. If we work quickly, you can still qualify for the first time buyers $8,000.00 federal grant."

"Oh, that would be great!"

"The Lake Nokomis area has always been the least expensive of the lakes neighborhoods because it's near the airport but you say that Mr. Mars needs peace and quiet, so that's out. There are some really lovely neighborhoods near Lake Harriet and Calhoun with lots of beautiful little places that might be just perfect!"

"Oh my God. I'm so excited." Special Agent or not, Veronica Mars looked like every other young newlywed about to go house hunting for the first time.

"Let's go find something cozy and quiet for Mr. Mars." Marla said, smiling.

"Mr. Mars. I love hearing that!" the blond sighed. Marla frowned. _What an odd thing for a young wife to say._

_FLASHBACK_

_"'Veronica Echolls'. I like the sound of that." she smiled dreamily, looking at her new engagement ring._

_"I don't." Logan said. She looked up at him, eyebrows raised in surprise. "it's kinda ugly." he went on. "Too many hard consonants. I was thinking; 'Logan Mars'." He spread his hands as though describing a marquee._

_"You were? Really?"_

_"Yeah." He slid his hands over her shoulders and locked his fingers loosely behind her neck. "I mean, who says the girl always has to take the guy's name? And why in the world would you want to associate yourself with that family, anyway?"_

_"I just want to associate myself with you."_

_"And 'Logan Mars' doesn't do it for you? I always thought you had a really cool name. And your dad...he's been better to me than mine ever was. I'd just as soon let the name Echolls die with Aaron."_

_"You've really thought about this, haven't you?"_

_"Yeah, I've been doodling 'Logan Mars' in my notebook margins since we were in high school."_

_"Ha. Sure you have." she laughed but looked thoughtful._

_"The whole point of the name thing is to signify that we're part of the same family, right?" Logan went on. "Why should we use mine? I love your dad and I hated mine. I don't want our kids to have his name."_

_"You've...you've thought about our kids?" She put her hands on his hips._

_"Yeah," he grinned. "Haven't you? Seventeen of 'em. All girls. They'll be awesome."_

_"We're not having seventeen kids." she laughed._

_"We can if we want." He rocked his hips towards her. "Wait till you see how cool they are."_

_"Aren't little boys cool?" She asked, cocking her head to one side._

_"Yeah," he said, sucking air in through his teeth, "But they're really naughty." _

_"I hope so."_

_"I just don't want them to be called Echolls. Look, I gave in to you about that grain of sand." he nodded towards her engagement ring. "You can let me have this. Why shouldn't we choose the name of the least fucked up family?"_

_"I love this ring." She held up her left hand. "It's elegant and understated. What I would NOT love is hauling around some two ton rock while trying to stay under the radar as a rookie special agent. I guess we can choose whatever name we want. It's pretty odd, though."_

_"For us? It doesn't even make the needle on the odd-meter move. Leaving the name 'Echolls' behind will be like taking off a 300lb coat of shit. You're think you're the only one who'd like to fly under the radar? That's been a dream of mine my whole life."_

_"Most people want to be famous."_

_"Most people are fucked up morons. That's why I can't stand most people."_

_"You don't think a move like this will land you right back in tabloid central?"_

_"Not if we keep it quiet. I don't see why we have to make a big deal out of it. I can keep my name for business purposes but privately...Logan Mars. I like it. I love it."_

_"I love you. Mr. Mars."_

_END FLASHBACK_

"I'm working with a Realtor," Veronica told Logan on the phone that night. "she seems to know the city very well. I told her we wanted to get near the lakes. I only had time to look at some photos today but I've got tomorrow off and we're going to look at some places. How much do you think we should spend?"

"I don't know. I have no idea what the market is like there. Look around, see what you like. I just want a place we both want to live in."

"Something cute and cozy?"

"I got nothin' against cozy but I draw the line at cute. Something that never feels like a fuckin' hotel suite."

"You are going to be blown away by how beautiful it is here. You won't miss the beach at all."

"I miss you."

"When are you coming? Are you almost done with the arrangements?"

"Yeah. My accountant's an idiot but when I finally got him to understand what I wanted he said he could do it. He hates the pre-nup."

"I hate the pre-nup."

"I know you do but it was a deal breaker."

"You fuck head."

"Don't talk dirty to me when I'm not there to take you up on it."

"That was not an invitation and you know it! I hate the pre-nup! People will think I only married you for your money!"

"No, people will think you only _divorced_ me for my money. I don't _care_ if they think _I _married you for my money."

"Who ever heard of a pre-nup that states that if we split, I get _everything? _It's insane!"

"If you ever leave me, you may as well leave me penniless."

"You know I could never do that to you."

"Hence the pre-nup. It's genius."

"You're a lunatic."

"What are you wearing?"

"_What?"_

"You know it makes me hot when you call me names. Are you naked? I'm naked. I mean...okay, _now _I'm naked."

Veronica laughed but somehow, they never got back to the subject of houses.

* * *

"Can you pull up the list of foreclosures for me?" Marla asked Elliot. "I swear, the Mars couple may be the luckiest kids to ever walk through our door! Two years ago, if some poor girl on a government salary with a slacker hubby told me she wanted a house near a city lake, I'd have had to tell her to buy a lottery ticket but now...there's a real chance I can find them something."

"Should I change my name to 'Clayton Elliot'?" her business partner asked. "I think it makes me sound more butch."

"Darling, if you want to be more butch, your name is not what you need to change. Foreclosures?"

"Here you go." He handed her a stack of documents. "You don't think I'm butch enough?"

"Enough for what? I didn't know you wanted to be more butch."

"Neither did I." He sighed. "Then I met Tracy."

"Elliot." Marla said severely, "If Tracy doesn't love you exactly the way you are, then Tracy doesn't deserve you."

"Oh. Do you know how much I love you?"

"Honey, you are no where near butch enough for me." Marla began to look through the listings. "You think there's any chance in the world those kids can swing 300k?"

"Well, she's got a government job, so at least they should qualify for a loan. Maybe. Really hard to tell before they even apply. We don't know what their student loan debt is."

"I know. I went back and forth all night about whether I was wasting time even showing her anything before we know what they qualify for."

"You didn't cancel the meeting."

"I decided that since I don't have any other pressing engagements this morning, I wasn't wasting _my_ time. Mrs. Mars is new to town; she has no idea how expensive the lakes are. If I can impress upon her what the reality of the situation is, then I'm not wasting her time either."

"Brilliant. Show her Linden Hills. _That's _a dose of reality she won't be able to ignore."

* * *

So it was that two hours later, Marla sat in her car outside a $450,000 foreclosure nestled in the most sought after neighborhood in town (a gorgeous enclave between Lakes Harriet and Calhoun) listening to the most bizarre telephone conversation she'd ever heard.

She and Veronica had looked at four different houses; all sweet two and three bedroom homes within a mile of two lakes, all with pretty, well kept lawns, all near parks and all for between three and five hundred thousand dollars, the lowest priced being foreclosures. Veronica had loved each house and taken pictures on her phone, which she had promptly emailed to her husband on the West coast.

Marla had been pleasantly surprised that Mrs. Mars hadn't been completely stunned by the prices of the modest cottages. She had to remind herself that West coast prices were always astronomical. Perhaps the real wake-up call wouldn't come until this extremely young couple tried to get a mortgage. Home prices had plummeted but money was nowhere near as easy to get as it had been a few years ago.

Things had been going just swimmingly until Veronica emailed photos of the fourth house. Then she'd gotten a text from the distant husband that had made her burst out laughing.

"What did he think of that one?" Marla asked.

"He...ah...hmmmm," Veronica tried to control her voice. "He wants to know why I keep sending him pictures of out houses."

"_What?"_

"These are lovely homes!" Veronica read aloud as she texted back to Logan. She squeaked indignantly when he texted back: _They're sheds. I told you I draw the line at cute._

"Oh!" Veronica punched a number on her phone. "These houses are not _cute!_" she said the second Logan answered. "They are beautiful homes! And I'm putting you on speaker so Marla can see what I have to deal with."

"Hello, Marla." Logan voice filled the car. "I told Veronica I'm not interested in cute, so would you ladies please quit fucking around?"

"Logan." Veronica admonished.

"Sorry. Please quit dicking around?"

"_Logan!"_

_"_Fine! Stop looking at miniatures and go find my house. What did you think I meant by 'cute'?"

"I thought you meant...cute." She looked at Marla and shrugged.

"I meant 'small'. I need big rooms. I need a view. And by 'view' I mean 'of a lake'. Not a field and not a bunch of other tiny sheds."

"Well, what did you mean by 'cozy'?"

"Fireplace. Duh."

"Small, brick fireplace?"

"Big stone fireplace."

"Logan, we're newlyweds." Veronica sighed. "Don't you want to live like the rest of the newlyweds?"

"Veronica," the voice on the phone mimicked her tone, perfectly. "We're multimillionaires. Don't you want to live like the rest of the multimillionaires?"

"They all live in Plymouth and that's too far from my office."

"Fuck 'em. I hate the rest of the millionaires anyway. It's why I quit the club. Marla, are you there?"

"Uh?" Marla started, her brain not quite keeping up with the turns this conversation had taken. "I'm... Yeah, sure. I'm here."

"Marla, I've been living in a hotel suite for five years. I need space. I want a house on a lake. I love my wife more than life itself, but apparently her definition of 'cute' is not the same as mine. I've been telling her she's cute for years and now I don't know what she thinks I meant by that. Apparently, she thinks she's an Amazon. Can you find my house?"

"Yep. I can do that." Marla said.

"Excellent. Veronica?"

"Yes?"

"What are you wearing?"

"Goodbye." Veronica hit end. She and Marla sat in silence for a few moments.

"Soooo...you're rich?" Marla finally asked.

"My husband has money." Veronica said quietly.

"Multimillionaire rich?"

"Lots of money. Tons of it."

"You were so excited about the $8000.00 rebate."

"$8000.00 is still a lot of money to me."

"Mr. Mars?"

"Not so much."

"These houses..."

"I've lived in a two bedroom apartment with my Dad for seven years. They seem huge to me."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"He said he wants to fly under the radar."

"What do you want?"

"I want to be an FBI agent. I've been working for this for years. See this?" She held up her left hand, indicating her ring. "He wanted to buy me a three carat diamond. Can you imagine a federal agent...a _rookie..._ sporting a frikkin' bird's egg on her finger? I wouldn't even be able to draw my weapon for the weight of it. I need to be close enough to the office to be able to get there quickly at a moment's notice. He wants to be on a lake. We would both prefer privacy."

"Honey, this is Minneapolis, not LA. Prince lives here and no one bothers him. Vince Flynn lives here. Privacy won't be a problem."

"Vince Flynn lives here?"

"Well, in a suburb of St. Paul. My point is you and your husband won't be bothered by your neighbors here. I will find your house. But I need to go back to my office. I need a new set of listings."

"Okay." Veronica sat up and smiled. "Drop me at the hotel? When you've got the new list, call me. I can get some work done over lunch."

* * *

Marla threw open the door to Elliot's office.

"Darling, I have great news!" she said. "Our sweet little FBI newlywed is a TROPHY WIFE."

"Oh my God, I've always wanted a Trophy Wife!" Elliot breathed ecstatically.

"Me too!" Marla bounced up and down excitedly. "I showed her a bunch of gorgeous houses in Linden Hills, she emailed photos to her husband and he called them _out houses._ Then she got him on the phone and he told me to quit fucking around with sheds and get him a house on a lake with a view! Couldn't you just _die?"_

_"_I'm going to call Bruce."

"Oh Darling, don't be bitchy."

"Moi? Not at all. He thinks he's all that 'cause he's practically got a corner on the market when it comes to parkway homes and I'm just going to tell him that we've got a whale and he can fork over the keys. That's not bitchy. Well, if it is, I don't care."

"Fine. Call Bruce. I'm getting the listings on everything on Harriet, Calhoun and Isles parkways." Marla opened the top file cabinet. Just like she always wanted to.

"So...what did the rich hubby sound like?" Elliot asked.

"Distinguished." She shrugged her shoulders. "Mid forties. Silver haired. Fit..."

"Oh God, I'm in love."

"...straighter than George W. Bush."

"Oh, now who's being bitchy?"

"Call Bruce. Man, there are a lot of houses for sale on the parkways!"

"A lot of folks bought a lot more house than they could afford."

"And Bruce sold to every one of them. Go ahead and be bitchy to that rotten old queen. We've got a bonafide Big Fish."

to be continued...


	2. Chapter 2 Meeting Mr Mars

Chapter 2

MEETING MR. MARS

Marla and Elliot watched through the front window as Veronica pulled up in front of their office.

"Check out that car." Elliot said, nodding towards Veronica's pearl colored Audi 6. "We should have smelled 'trophy wife' from the get-go."

"I just assumed it was a rental." Marla said.

"Who rents a brand new Audi 6? Certainly not teen aged girls who are new in town."

"Her outfit was simple and her ring is minuscule. And her boobs…well, she didn't really fit the profile!"

"Like we know what the trophy wife profile is." Elliot sighed.

"You're right. A young husband would buy her something flashy. A Corvette or a Thunderbird. Not an Audi. Audi just screams 'maturity'. He probably drives a Volvo or a Caddie."

"Oh come on! He can't be _sixty!"_

"Okay, a Mercedes, then."

"I'll bet he's perpetually tan."

"With perfect teeth."

"And erectile dysfunction."

"Elliot!"

"Well, I can't stand it that they have all the fun!"

"Here she comes."

Veronica came through the front door and smiled. "Are we ready to start again? I'm a little nervous."

"We're ready." Marla said, hoisting a stack of listings. "There are a lot of homes available when money isn't a problem so let's look through these and pick out what you like best." She and Veronica sifted through the stack and after a half hour or so, had chosen a half a dozen houses on the Grand Round that Veronica liked the looks of best. Armed with addresses and photos, they headed out.

Their first stop was Lake Harriet, where they looked at one house on the East side of the lake. It was a beautiful old craftsman style mansion with a large yard, right across the street from a wonderful, shady beach and close to a bike path that lead to the Minnehaha parkway. Veronica took pictures inside, outside and of the surrounding parkland, which she immediately emailed to Logan.

"Well?" Marla asked as Veronica read his answering text.

"Too busy." Veronica shook her head. "He doesn't want to be right on a beach and he noticed there are no wind surfers on this lake."

"Lake Calhoun is the favorite spot for that." Marla said. "Harriet is more of a family oriented lake; more beaches, more kids. And of course, the band stand across there…" she pointed to the castle like structure on the North West shore of the lake. "Live music at night all summer long and the concession stand sells the worlds best ice cream cones. If Mr. Mars likes to surf, Calhoun is his lake. That's our next stop."

Marla was right. Larger and rounder than Harriet, Calhoun was a wind surfer's mecca. There were a dozen boards out, zipping across the water, outpacing the sailboats. Although less than a half mile from Harriet, Calhoun pulsed with a vibration that cried _I'm the city of lakes; let's have fun!_They looked at three houses. A Victorian on the East side (too dark), a contemporary on the South side (wonderful but across the street from the busiest beach in town) and a Mediterranean villa on the West side (nice but too ostentatious and much too close to it's neighbors). Veronica loved them all but Marla was beginning to think that Mr. Mars was impossible to please. Perhaps he drove a Cadillac, after all.

The last two houses were on Lake of the Isles, the smallest, prettiest and by far most expensive of the lakes. Only a mile away from downtown, a Lake of the Isles Parkway address was close to the most exclusive address in town. Only Mount Curve; up the hill from the lake, perched on a ridge overlooking downtown, was more high end. Isles had no beaches and no sail boat buoys. It was connected to Calhoun by a waterway called the Lagoon so kayakers and canoeists had access but the two bridges spanning the Lagoon made Isles inaccessible to sail boats. The irregular shape of the lake and the two islands in the middle of it made it unappealing to sailors, anyway; not enough room to catch a fair breeze. It was a canoeists paradise. It was, however, cheek by jowl with Calhoun and had by far the most gorgeous homes. The entire parkway around the lake was occupied by mansion after mansion with perfectly manicured lawns and magnificent gardens; over a hundred enormous houses with unobstructed views of the lake and the islands. Marla was convinced that the Mars' home was on Lake of the Isles. She didn't understand Mr. Mars objection at all; too 09er.

"What does that even mean?" she asked, perplexed, after showing Veronica the last house on her agenda.

"It doesn't matter," Veronica said, shaking her head. "I know what he means."

It was a spectacularly beautiful summer day and they sat on a bench near the bridge to the lagoon, under a grove of crab apple trees.

"You should see this place in late May," Marla said. "Stand after stand of apple, crab and mock crab apple trees all around the lake. It's white, pink and fuchsia as far as the eye can see. And the lilacs! Oh, I'm telling you; It's breath taking."

"What's through there?" Veronica pointed to a second bridge about a quarter mile around the shore.

"Oh, that's the channel—" Marla stopped. She sat up straight, staring at the second bridge. Then she turned to Veronica and smiled. "Mrs. Mars, I'm so sorry. You want peace and quiet, a lake view and easy access to down town St. Paul? Your house is right through there. I can't believe I didn't think of it right away. Come on!"

In two minutes they had driven around Isles and turned off at the second bridge. They followed the parkway beside the channel but turned off after a block.

"It's all one way, but the lake we're going to is actually really, really close. Calhoun is right down there," Marla nodded down Dean parkway as she turned in the opposite direction. Two blocks later they had crossed a bike path and a railroad track and were back on a parkway of another lake. "This is Cedar lake. It's part of the chain of lakes but for some odd reason doesn't get lumped in with the others. I think part of it is that this neighborhood doesn't really go anywhere. No one drives through here unless they live here. Long time city residents sometimes use this parkway to get around rush hour traffic. For the most part, this is like an alternate universe."

"An alternate universe?" Veronica frowned.

"Yep. It's connected to the other lakes, it has beaches and sailing and canoeing but it's off the beaten path, it's quiet and extremely private. It's the only lake in the city with houses right on the shore but the one I want to show you is on the parkway right…here!"

Marla pulled to a stop in front of a large, green lot. Set back from the street, behind a short hedge was an architectural marvel; the entire first floor looked to be glass and the second floor was constructed of enormous, beautiful wooden panes with rows of windows. Veronica stared at it for a long moment, feeling her jaw drop open. Without taking her eyes off the house, she fished through her purse and pulled out her phone. She hit one on speed dial.

"Logan," she breathed a moment later, "She found it. How soon can you get here?" she nodded and hung up. Then she pointed her phone at the house, snapped a photo and emailed it to him. A few seconds later, she read his return text and smiled.

"What did he say?" Marla asked. Veronica turned the phone so she could see the words _That's it._

"Can we see it?" Veronica asked.

"I don't have a key," Marla said. "But I can get it." She pulled out her own phone and quickly dialed. "Hello, Brucie! It's Marla. Listen, sweet heart, I'm going to need the key to—oh, he did? Well, what did you expect? You know he's had a crush on you for years. Yes, we're here now. Hang on." She lowered her phone and looked at Veronica. "He can be here in twenty with the key. Can we wait?"

"Of course!"

"We'll be here, dear!" Marla cooed into the phone. "See you in twenty! Thanks so much." She ended the call. "I guess Elliot already filled him in on the situation. He's not too happy that I've found a buyer for his house."

"Is it his?"

"No, I mean it's his listing. It's been on the market for months. So have all the homes we looked at today. That was unheard of a few years ago but when money was easy everyone was buying. Two thirds of the houses on the parkway are on the block because the owners can't make the balloon payments and there aren't any buyers. You and your husband are a godsend."

"So you're telling me we can low-ball?"

"Not on this one." Marla laughed. "If you wanted any of the houses on Isles, I'd say yes but this one is just a widow who wants to downsize and move to Florida where there's no income tax. Or winter."

"So you're telling me we can low-ball?"

"You can try." Marla laughed again. "God, it feels good to steal this one from Bruce."

"I definitely got the vibe that there's some rivalry there."

"Oh, yes. And he's my ex husband."

"Okay, did _not _get that vibe!" Veronica admitted.

"_And_ he's Elliot's ex boyfriend."

"Ohh." Veronica's eyes widened. "And you're still friends?"

"Elliot and I have been friends for years. He didn't even meet Bruce until long after our divorce. He came by the office to drop off some papers and Elliot was smitten. You should have been there the morning after they hooked up and Elliot confessed to me what he'd done; the screaming and crying! I handled it all pretty well, but _Elliot_!" she shook her head. "Drama, drama, drama."

"Wow." Veronica squeaked.

"Poor Elliot suffered much worse at Bruce's hands than I ever did. When your husband tells you he's gay, you realize that you never really had a chance. For poor Elliot the rejection was more personal."

"Still, how awkward for you." Veronica could barely control her voice.

"Oh, honey don't waste any sympathy on me, I got what I deserved; I stole Bruce from his first wife. Oh, hey. That's him."

Veronica turned and saw a dark blue BMW convertible pull in and park. Out of it squeezed an extremely dapper, completely bald and _completely_ round middle aged man. Veronica turned and looked at Marla.

"Hey, twenty years ago, he was really cute." she shrugged.

"You mean 'small'?" Veronica demanded.

"So lovely to see you, Marla, my dear," Bruce stopped, indignant that the majestic and mellifluous greeting he had rehearsed all the way over had gone unheard due to the laughter of the two women in his ex wife's car. He stood in the street, huffing impatiently while the ladies calmed down and exited the car.

"Bruce, my love." Marla said unsteadily, "This is Mrs. Mars. She and her husband are relocating from the West Coast. They are interested in this house. Thank you so much for bringing the key so that I may show it to her. I'll drop it by your office later."

"How do you do, Mrs. Mars?" Bruce said smoothly and sweetly. Then he turned back to Marla and flatly stated "I'll wait."

"No need for that, darling. We're going to be a while and I'm sure you're very, very busy."

"I-very well. Please come by the office later. You can drop the key off with my assistant, Candy." Bruce was clearly unhappy as he watched the two of them approach the front door.

"Candy is a _boy." _Marla stage whispered to Veronica as they went up the front walk.

"_Stop it." _Veronica hissed, seriously worried that she would collapse with laughter before Bruce had crammed himself back into his tiny car.

"He'd rather gouge out his eyes than leave me with the key to this place," Marla said. "But he'd rather _eat them _than admit to me that he has time to stand around and wait for us."

"You _married that?"_ Veronica couldn't help blurting as the BMW zoomed off.

"Well, I divorced it, too." Marla defended herself. Then she pushed open the front door.

The moment Veronica stepped through the front door, _Oh, hell, the second I laid eyes on the front door, _she admitted to herself, she knew that despite her talk of low-balling, she and Logan would spend anything to live in this house.

The impression that the first floor was entirely made of glass was of course, an optical illusion. The foyer opened on the right to the living room and to the left to a large, bright kitchen, through a space large enough to be a formal dining area but not necessarily so. A large, beautiful crystal light fixture, which somehow defied being called a 'chandelier' graced the space. Straight ahead was a wide staircase leading upstairs. Veronica looked up and was amazed to see water reflected on the wall high above.

Marla was wise enough to keep silent and let the house speak for itself. She knew there would be time enough later to describe the local river rock and hard woods used in the home.

Stepping into the living room, Veronica made a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a laugh when she saw that while floor to ceiling windows made up the walls facing the lake to the East and the woods on the North side of the lot, the wall behind which rose the staircase was a huge, stone fireplace. The wall facing the lake was made of the same beautifully grained wood that made up the siding of the upper floor. At each end of that wall, large french doors lead to the spaces beyond.

Through the farthest set of doors was a beautiful library; built in book cases rose all the way to the ten foot ceiling, broken only by large square windows overlooking the shady, green back yard. The doors closer to the middle of the house lead to a sun room. Two walls of floor to ceiling windows, like the front of the house, allowed one to sit there in perfect comfort, twelve months a year and feel as though one were out in the yard. A door lead out to a large stone terrace that ran the length of the house. At the far end of the terrace, another door lead back into the kitchen.

Upon walking into the kitchen, Veronica couldn't help but blurt "I have _got to learn how to cook!"_

Back in the living room, Marla was shimmying in delight.

Like the rest of the front of the house, floor to ceiling windows let the lake into the kitchen. The rest of it eschewed stainless steel and looked like something out of a Rosamund Pilcher novel. The gleaming hard wood floors throughout and the warmth of the natural stone perfectly offset the modern/industrial elements in a balancing act that bordered on magic.

Veronica pulled out her phone again.

"Logan, it's perfect!" she squealed a moment later. "It's absolutely perfect!"

"Good job. Way to be cool." she could hear the smile in his voice. "Can the Realtor see that you're peeing in the corners?"

"I don't even care! Are you on your computer? You can NOT look at this place on your phone."

"Ah...yes. Fire away."

She began snapping photos of the lake through the windows, the kitchen, the fireplace...

"It looks good," he agreed when he opened the photos. "I need you to show me one more thing..."

"I haven't even been upstairs yet and I don't even care!" she told him.

"I don't care, either. I want you to see your face, right now."

Veronica turned the phone on herself and snapped a picture.

Logan laughed so loudly that Marla could hear him in the other room.

* * *

Saturday morning, Marla and Elliot were waiting in the office as excited as kids on Christmas Eve.

The upstairs of the house had not disappointed. Two large, airy bedrooms with a Jack and Jill bath had occupied half the second floor space while a master suite, equipped with two walk in closets and a huge master bath took up the other half. The fully finished basement boasted a state of the art media room with two tiered seating and a family room with two big egress windows which kept it from feeling like a basement. At the back of the large, tree lined lot, a four car garage had a fully appointed mother-in-law apartment above it.

The house was listed at $1.9 million ( three years ago it could've gotten twice that) and Marla couldn't decide if she was more excited about the commission or about meeting the elusive Mr. Mars, who was flying in this morning to look at the place with his young wife.

Elliot was definitely more excited about the latter. He and Marla were in his office, pretending to go over paperwork while Veronica waited in the lobby. She had offered to pick Logan up at the airport but he had insisted on meeting them at the office.

"I'm thinking '_George Hamilton'." _Elliot said.

"Yuk. He was old when I was her age." Marla said. "Think 'George Clooney'."

"Oooh. Yes. I love Clooney's gray hair. Very Chairman of the Board."

"Sinatra?"

"Who? No, I mean he's very CEO."

"That actually stands for Chief Executive Officer."

"Oh, stop nit picking and quit pissing on my fantasy. What if he turns out to be some old, fat, billionaire that she only married for his money?"

"No way. Look at her." They peeked at Veronica who was pacing nervously, never taking her eyes off the big front window. "She's so excited she's about to explode."

"Definitely Clooney. I'm hoping he's secretly gay."

"Now who's pissing on who's fantasy? I'm hoping he'll be in the mood for the company of someone his own age."

"Are we really hoping for the destruction of that adorable girl's marriage?" Elliot asked plaintively.

"NO." Marla looked at him, horrified. "It's just a fantasy!"

"Oh good." Elliot relaxed again. "OH! _Robert Wagner!"_

_"_You totally have a Daddy complex, don't you?"

Veronica interrupted them just then, looking frustrated but resigned. "He just called. There's been some hold up at the air port. He said he'd meet us at the house. I gave him the address."

"Oh, that's fine. Really!" Marla did her best to soothe Veronica's frayed nerves. "We'll just go wait there. Would you like to drive? I really love your car."

* * *

A half hour later, the three of them sat, waiting, on the patio in front of the house. They had already gone through the place once and Veronica had been delighted to find that it was even better than she had remembered it from three days ago. She had tried calling Logan once but he hadn't answered, so there was nothing left for the three of them to do but sit, chat and scan the parkway for the arrival of a taxi from the airport.

"Betcha fifty bucks he shows up in a limo," Elliot leaned over and whispered to Marla.

Before she had a chance to consider the bet, Veronica jumped to her feet with a gasp. A bright yellow Ferrari had come zooming down the parkway and squealed to a halt in front of the house. Marla and Elliot had no time to react before the driver's door flew open and a figure leaped out. Veronica raced down the lawn and into Logan's arms. He spun her around, slamming her up against the passenger side of the car as he kissed her like he hadn't seen her in ages.

When he finally let her up for air, he turned toward the house. His eyes quickly scanned the front, then he strode up the walk, dragging Veronica by the hand behind him. He marched past the two Realtors without notice and dragged his wife through the front door.

"This is my...Logan!" was all Veronica had time to say to them as she disappeared through the front door, which Logan kicked shut behind them.

Marla and Elliot stared in amazement as they heard the deadbolt thrown into place.

They looked at each other, Marla's face a mask of dismay; Elliot's almost as delighted as Veronica's had been.

"Be still my heart." he finally said.

"HE'S A CHILD." Marla said.

"Who's your daddy?" Elliot growled, looking at the door as though he could see through it.

"I thought you had a thing for older men?"

"So did I."

Hearing a thump from upstairs, they both stepped back a few paces and looked up.

"What do you think they're doing?" Elliot breathed. Marla looked at him as though he were the stupidest creature on earth. "No, I mean in detail." he explained.

"You don't think this is some kind of elaborate scam, do you?" Marla asked. "Could they just be a pair of con artists who like to do it in up scale houses?"

"That car is a pretty convincing prop." Elliot raised an eyebrow. Marla turned and looked at the Ferrari.

"He left the motor running." she said.

"Did he ever." Elliot looked at the upstairs windows while Marla went to the street. She leaned in through the driver's door, which stood wide open and turned off the engine. A moment later, she came back.

"It's a brand new car." She said. "seven miles on the odometer. I guess they're legit."

Elliot looked at her, suddenly dismayed. "Why are all the good ones married or straight?"

"Or eight years old! Did you see him?" Marla demanded. "HE'S A BABY."

"He looked plenty grown up to me." Elliot chortled. Marla rattled the front door knob. She knew the keys were right on the front hall table, where she'd left them. There was nothing to do but wait for the couple to let them in. She started to laugh and Elliot joined her.

They were sitting on the front terrace, enjoying the view and still chuckling intermittently when suddenly they heard the dead bolt and turned around. There in the open doorway stood a young man whose shirt was gone, exposing a physique tanned from his broad shoulders down the flat abs that disappeared past the still unbuttoned waistband of his jeans. He leaned one elbow on the doorjamb, letting his forearm come to a rest atop his sun streaked light brown hair. His face looked remarkably relaxed and satisfied as he gave them a singularly charming smile.

"Hi." He said, offering his right hand. "I'm Logan Mars."

to be continued...


	3. Chapter 3 Home Coming

Chapter 3

HOMECOMING

Veronica had known without a doubt the moment she'd spied the yellow sports car speeding down the parkway toward them that it was Logan. She could tell by the way the blood pounded in her veins. She had spent years trying to fight the biological cues her body gave her; thinking that the pull she had always felt toward him was a weakness she had to overcome. Somehow, she had gotten the idea stuck in her head that a physical attraction this strong couldn't possibly be a good thing.

She had stopped consciously fighting her attraction to Logan at the end of their freshman year at Hearst. After the Piz debacle, the sex tape scandal and the week in which first Logan had rescued her and then she had rescued him from death and possible dismemberment, she had thrown in the towel and consigned herself to her folly.

It was something Wallace said in their junior year that had convinced her that being with Logan, although certainly pleasurable, was not folly. They were having an ordinary late night conversation, ranging from Wallace's current girlfriend to the likelihood of string theory being accurate when Wallace went off on a tangent about chemical attraction; how some molecules are attracted to other, different molecules to form something far greater than themselves.

"Hydrogen and Oxygen can't help it; they gotta form water whether they want to or not. Damn good thing, too. No water; no life."

In a flash, Veronica had understood that she and Logan were Hydrogen and Oxygen. They were very different from each other but their attraction was beyond their control and it was a damn good thing, too. She had intended to marry him from the moment he came falling through the door of the Fitzpatrick's cabin in the desert (or was it from the moment he met her eyes while beating the shit out of Gory Sorokin?) but she no longer considered that decision as giving in to self-indulgence, but the road to self-realisation. No Logan; no life.

Who says just because something feels so good it must be bad?

Not Logan. He had given in completely, all those years ago, on the balcony of the Camelot. When Veronica gave up her last _sub_conscious qualm about the two of them, she finally enabled herself to enjoy what they had more than she'd ever thought possible.

So Veronica had instinctively started toward the curb before the Ferrari had skidded to a stop. The instant he'd shot out of the car, she had launched herself into his arms and the world disappeared around them. Her heart pounded and her senses swam as they tried to climb into each others mouths and without thinking, she slid one hand up under his shirt and the other into the waist of his jeans. She had moaned in frustration when he broke the kiss and turned toward the house. She didn't think her feet ever touched the ground as he lead her up the front walk.

She was rather stunned to see that those nice Realtors (she had completely forgotten their names. Or that they existed.) were still there, staring at them; the woman in shock and the guy in...amazement.

"This is my_..." what's the word, again? what language do I speak_? "Logan!" she managed to throw over her shoulder as he pulled her through the front door after him. He knocked the door shut and nearly melted her bones with a look as he threw the dead bolt before folding her into his arms again.

She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him as he lifted her off her feet, spinning her away from the door and toward the stairway. It was tricky, trying to maneuver up the stairs with her legs wrapped around his waist and his tongue down her throat but he managed. They bounced off the walls a couple of times before reaching the second floor. A quick look around located the master suite and then Veronica was flat on her back on the large bed and she couldn't tell if he was pulling off her clothes or if she was but in record time they were both naked and trying to get inside each others skin.

The week apart had shortened their fuses so that it didn't take very long or very much for them to get each other off and in what seemed like no time at all, they lay on the bed panting and spent. Veronica giggled, amazed as always at how good it was with Logan, who had collapsed on top of her with a surge and a groan.

He shifted himself so that he wasn't crushing her. When his heart rate and breathing had settled back somewhere toward normal he said "I like this house."

"Its...it's not ours!" A tiny part of her was horrified by what they had just done.

"Sure it is."

"And this is _not _our _bed!"_

"You want the bed? I'll have 'em throw it in."

"I don't want the bed but I think we'll have to burn this comforter." She started to laugh.

"That's okay. It's ugly, anyway."

"Speaking of ugly, I see you bought a car."

"How can you use the word 'ugly' when referring to a Ferrari?"

"It's _yellow."_

_"_You know, yellow cars are the safest."

"_What?"_

_"_Most accidents happen because of what people don't see. No one is gonna hit _that_ car because they didn't see it coming."

"You are so full of crap!" she grinned at him.

"That car caught my eye from the taxi on the way here! That's why I was late."

"You stopped off on your way from the airport to buy a car?"

"No, I stopped off to buy a _Ferrari." _He ran a finger from her throat down to her belly button. "I like yellow. Cars." he clarified.

"I know."

He propped himself up on his elbows and looked around the room for the first time. "I really do like this place."

"You'd better. I think we just violated the Realtor's version of 'you break it, you buy it.' Oh, my God!" she chortled. "They're down there! You locked them out in the front yard!"

"Who?"

"Marla and Elliot, our Realtors!"

"Oh. Oh yeah. There _were _some people down there, weren't there?" He looked on the floor for his clothes and grabbed his jeans. "Take your time, I'll go introduce myself."

"I can't...I...how can I ever look them in the face again?"

He considered that for a moment and said "They're about to make a 7% commission on a two million dollar sale. They'll let us fuck on the desks in their office. Besides, I'm pretty sure they could tell you weren't in control of the situation."

"I'm just the victim of a drive by fucking?"

"Lucky you." He grinned. "Put your clothes back on. Or not. Your choice. Just act like this is perfectly normal."

"Ah, your famous 'brazen it out' tactic?"

"Works every time." He yanked his jeans up and leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. She sat up and began searching for her own clothes as she heard him skip down the stairs.

* * *

"Hi," he said, offering his right hand. "I'm Logan Mars."

"Ohhhh." Elliot groaned. He whirled around and walked back toward the car. Marla watched him go, her eyebrows skyward, then turned and smiled.

"Mr. Mars. Welcome to Minneapolis! I'm Marla Banks and that...is my partner, Elliot Clayton. It's so nice to meet you!"

"Is he okay?"

"He's fine. I can't tell you how much we've enjoyed working with your wife!"

"Yeah," Logan ran his hands through his hair and stood up straight. "She's one in six billion. This is a great house."

"Nothing cute about this one, is there? Have you had a chance to see how cozy it is yet?"

"Not all of it but I liked what I saw." Logan frowned, looking at Elliot, who was sitting sideways in the front seat of the Audi, leaning out, apparently engrossed in his footwear. "Are you sure he's okay?"

"He's fine. Let's look at the rest of the house." Marla moved past Logan just in time to see Veronica, looking very flushed and tousled, coming down the stairs. Meeting her eyes, Veronica blushed brightly but Marla just smiled.

Veronica's blush intensified as she handed her husband his shirt.

"Ah, great!" he said, taking it from her. "I wondered what had happened to that."

* * *

Marla got into the driver's seat of Veronica's Audi. "Mr. Mars is just as taken with the house as his wife is," she said to Elliot, starting the engine. "What the hell happened to you?"

"Aren't we waiting for her?"

"Nope. She's going to show him around the town. They're taking his car. They want us to draw up the paper work immediately. Why didn't you join us?"

"_That _is the hottest guy I've ever laid eyes on."

"Really? He's a nice looking kid and all but..."

"No, no, nonono. There's something there that has _nothing _to do with how he looks. That hasn't happened to me since I was fourteen."

"Oh, that's just because he showed up at the door half naked and reeking of sex!"

"My favorite smell." Elliot's eyes rolled back in his head.

"Ugh! I don't want to have this conversation!"

"What, now? Or with me?"

"Ever! With anyone!"

"What are you talking about? We've had this convo before."

"Not sober!"

"Oh. True. I don't have any plans tonight. You want I should bring over a bottle of Cabernet?"

"Darling, we just made a boatload of money! Tonight we drink Champagne!"

"Oh, no. Not for me. The last time I drank Champagne I woke up next to a bear."

"You'll be with me. There aren't any bears in my apartment."

"Well waking up next to you would be even worse."

"I promise not to take advantage of you. Call Bruce; he's got to be at this meeting later, too."

"Oh goody!"

* * *

"Good news, Candy; we've sold the Cedar Lake house." Bruce announced, patting his chin in the reflection of the glass covering the giant Basquait print on the wall.

"Why do I care?" the slim, beautiful young man who was Bruce's office assistant asked.

"Oh, don't be like that." Bruce frowned. "I've already told you; get your Realtor's license and you'll get a cut of commissions. As long as you think all you have to do is sit there looking pretty, all you'll make is salary."

_Shut the fuck up, you randy old cow, _Candy thought, but didn't say. He expressed himself thoroughly by rolling his huge, dark brown, heavily lashed eyes. _Like I want to spend my life selling God damned houses. The second I've saved up enough money to pay for the Aveda Institute, I am out of here FOREVER._

_"_Anyway, it's a huge relief to finally get paid for that listing. Mrs. Blakely was driving me to distraction. Now, she'll get her money, move to Florida with the rest of the ancient crones and we'll never have to deal with her again. I don't even mind splitting the commission, I just wish it wasn't with..._them."_

" 'Them'?" Candy perked up. "Do you mean to tell me that Marla _Banks _found a buyer for Blakely's Beauty?"

"Stranger things have happened." Bruce smiled, hopefully.

"Not around here." Candy said, severely. "_Never."_

"The buyer is some fat cat from the West coast. I met his wife the other day. Cute as a bug and barely legal. Elliot says it can't wait till Monday but that we need to meet this afternoon. How's the schedule?"

"Well, you've got a showing at 4:00 but it's that cock sucker Conrad who's been wasting your time for over a year."

"Don't call the client's names. And the houses are _listings, _not pets."

"The fuck?"

"Don't name them! 'Blakely's Beauty'? You'll wind up getting attached."

"Oh for Christ's sake, I only do it to keep from getting bored to fucking death around here. Besides, that is a gorgeous house, no two ways about it."

"It's unprofessional."

"Please." _I should take comments on professionalism from you? No._

_"_Anyway, the sooner we get this over with, the better. Can you get the initial paper work together? I need names of mortgage broker's who'll work with us over the weekend to get the ball rolling. I don't know what the rush is; nothing is going to happen before the banks open on Monday. Marla probably just wants to impress the buyer. What a twat."

"Or maybe she just wants to piss off you," Candy muttered, not quite under his breath.

"What? Why would you say that?"

"Hey, you fucked both her and Elliot. Now it's their turn. Pay-back's a bitch." _Bitch. _Candy smiled sweetly.

* * *

Logan and Veronica sat on two tall adirondack chairs overlooking the dock at Lake Calhoun. They were eating fish tacos they'd gotten for lunch at the Tin Fish and were just watching the people go by. It was a hot, sunny Saturday afternoon in late July and the lake was jumping. Mothers pushing strollers and walking dogs shared the path with joggers, swimmers and picnicers, on their way to the beach, the restaurant or just a nice patch of grass to spread out on. The bike path was crowded with two wheelers, three wheelers and roller bladers. Out on the water were sail boats of all descriptions, wind surfers, kayaks, canoes and paddle boats.

"Doesn't anyone in this town have a job?" Logan asked.

"There's a recession on, haven't you heard?" Then she nodded toward the fish grill behind them. "Those guys are working."

"Is it always this crowded?"

"I doubt it. It's Saturday. In the real world of working folks, that's part of what is called the 'week end' and we drones typically get two days off. Come back Monday morning."

"Note to self," Logan said. "Stay at home during the so-called 'week end'. How far are we from home?"

"You're already thinking of it as home?" she smiled in surprise.

"Look around!" he waved his water bottle at the blue water and white sails. "What could be better? You were totally right about this place. And that house...wow."

"You think it's a done deal already, don't you?" she asked him, a crease between her brows.

"It is a done deal. Lady wants to sell, we want to buy. Deal? Done."

"I'm so nervous." she shook her head. "I feel like something is going to happen and they won't let us have the house."

"How is anybody gonna stop us from buying that house?" He reached out and ran a hand through her hair. "You don't have to worry; I will get you that house. That's one thing I'm really good at; buying shit."

"You're good at a few other things..." she raised her eyebrow."Believe it or not, we're only about a mile from it."

"No way. We've been driving around for hours." In two hours they had only seen lakes Harriet and Calhoun. They had parked the car and walked through the rose gardens on the North East shore of Harriet and then stopped for lunch at the Tin Fish. They had yet to go more than three miles from the new house.

"We've been driving in circles. See that bridge?" she nodded to where Lake Street passed over a strip of water leading away from the lake. "That leads to Lake of the Isles, where another bridge about a quarter mile that way leads to a channel, which leads to Cedar lake, which is right outside our front door."

"All connected?"

"Uh huh."

"You're saying we could get here by canoe?" He grinned.

"Yeah, if we had a canoe. Or by bike, or we could even (_gasp)_ walk!" she laughed. "This is going to be so much fun."

"Minneapolis!" he put up a fist, which she bumped and they both pulled their hands back, waving their fingers as fireworks.

"We'd better get over to the office where Elliot and Marla are meeting us. Did you get ahold of your accountant?" she knew he had; she'd been right beside him when he'd talked to the man. "Everything is set?"

"Yep. It's all set. No reason we can't do this." He chugged the rest of his bottled water. "You can calm down. You're vibrating like a chihuahua."

"I don't vibrate!" she pushed his shoulder.

"Yeah, sometimes, you do. It's how I can tell when you're really, _really _excited."

"I've never done anything like this before."

"I _love it _when you say that." he let his eyes slide over her. "Stick with me, kid. You'll do all kindsa stuff you never did before."

She laughed and tossed her wrapper into a nearby trash can, and said "Well, let's go buy a house." Logan picked her up by the waist and twirled her down the two steps to the street. Instead of letting go, he spun her around for one more look at the people, the boats and the lake. Spinning is how Veronica could tell that Logan was really, _really _excited.

* * *

"So." Bruce said unctiously into the phone. "You actually got the client to come up to scratch. Congratulations."

"Thank you." Marla smiled, pretending to take Bruce's comments at face value instead of the insults he meant them to be.

"I really don't understand why you insisted that we meet today instead of waiting until Monday. I suppose we can start the paper work and credit checking now but until the banks are open..."

"Mr. Mars insisted. He'd like to close as soon as possible."

"As would we all, Marla darling. As would we all." Bruce sighed. "But unless your client is paying in cash, there's just not much we can do to speed the process."

"Look, Brucie dear, I actually called ahead because I wanted to give you a head's up on the buyer..."

"O for Christ's sake Marla!" Bruce cut her off. "I have been selling high end homes _successfully _since long before your real estate licence was a glimmer in your contact lenses! I do NOT need to be told how to handle rich, pampered, upper class buyers! I pride myself on my ability to treat them in the manner which they believe they deserve."

"I know all that!" Marla snapped. "I thought you should be prepared; I don't think the Mars are your typical buyers. In fact, I'll go so far as to say you haven't dealt with anyone quite like them..."

"How the hell would you know? Just get their asses in my office and watch how a real salesman operates! Keep your fat mouth shut and maybe you'll learn something!"

Marla stared, open mouthed at her phone, which Bruce had unceremoniously hung up on her.

"That arrogant prick." Elliot breathed.

"Don't worry," Marla said dryly. "I'll take his advice and keep my fat mouth shut."

"That'll teach him."

* * *

Candy sat up straight in surprise when the young couple was ushered into the Real Estate Office. _Omigod. Hot, hot hottie hot alert. _He tossed his jet black bangs off his face to get a better look and almost choked when Marla and Elliot followed right behind.

"Hi, Marla." He smiled. "I heard you...Fuck."

"Why, Candy, what an odd rumor to be spreading!" Marla laughed.

"_They're _buying the Cedar Lake house?" Candy demanded. Then he gave Logan and Veronica another look. "You guys are like, my age!"

"Candy?" Marla waved a hand in front of his face. "Go tell Bruce we're here, please."

"Oh, with all the pleasure in the world!" He sprung up out of his chair and flung himself down the hall to Bruce's office.

The door closed behind him and Logan looked sideways at his wife. "Are all the people in this town insane?" he asked, then added "God, I hope so."

* * *

"Elliot and Marla are here with the Blakely Beauty's buyers." Candy announced as he strode into Bruce's inner sanctum.

"Good, good, good." Bruce said. "Did you offer them anything? Coffee, a glass of white wine?"

"No."

"Why the hell not? Have you forgotten everything I've ever taught you about how to service this particular clientele?"

"No."

"Well then...?"

"Trust me. They don't seem like the coffee or white wine type."

"Oh, what do you know?"

"_Payback's a bitch!" _Candy hissed in a stage whisper as Bruce pushed past him. Bruce glared at him, then smoothed his features into a charming smile and went out into the lobby to demonstrate fully why the buyer's had made a mistake in not coming to him to find their new home. He floated grandly into the lobby and smiled at Marla, nodded condescendingly at Elliot and greeted the Mars couple.

"Why, hello, and wel...welcome." He stopped and stared. For a moment he was thoroughly confused by what he saw in his office. There was his despised ex wife, and his spurned lover and a pair of children who's combined ages weren't as old as his favorite pair of gardening boots. _You fucked them both now it's their turn h_e heard Candy's voice in his memory. _Payback is a bitch._

He smiled. "Welcome to my office, Mr. and Mrs. Mars. I can not tell you how delighted I am that you have found a home you wish to purchase. Candy?" he called over his shoulder. Candy appeared, grinning widely. "Candy, please show this delightful couple to the conference room."

"Come on," Candy tossed his bangs at Veronica and Logan, who followed him down the hall.

"Is this a joke?" Bruce whispered furiously to Marla, who just raised her eyebrows at him. "If this is a joke, I swear to God I will fry up your livers and feed them to my cat!" Marla put her hands on her hips and glared at him.

"It's not a joke, Bruce." Elliot said, wearily. "Mr. and Mrs. Mars are in fact, in a position to buy the house on Cedar Lake."

"They had DAMN well better be." Bruce snarled, turning for the conference room. "Well, come on!"

* * *

"So you two are buying Mrs. Blakely's house?" Candy asked as he showed them into the conference room. "I love that house. How can you guys afford it?"

"Family money." Logan said. Veronica shot him a look that she hoped conveyed to him that discretion was the better part of valor.

"What business is your family in?"

"Pandering to the masses and exploiting the lowest common denominator." Logan said.

"That sounds awesome. I wish my family did that."

"You'd be better off selling drugs." Logan assured him. "It's more respectable and the guilt isn't as heavy."

"Well, good luck with your offer. Don't let Bruce get to you." Candy sighed. "God, you're a cute couple."

"Oh, not cute, surely." Veronica shook her head. "We're much too big."

* * *

Bruce had sent Candy out to prepare a tray of refreshments for them; cookies and white wine were his standard fare but for the Mars, Bruce asked Candy to bring juice. After a few minutes of dull small talk, Elliot could see that Mrs. Mars was becoming agitated by the wait so he went to help Candy. He found the young man staring out the front window.

"Check out the Lamborghini." Candy said.

"It's a Ferrari." Elliot put several crystal low ball glasses on the tray with the plate of gourmet cookies Candy had already set out.

"Whatever." Candy said. "Not crazy about yellow. I'd want black."

"It belongs to Mr. Mars. He bought it this morning on his way from the airport."

"Really? Cool."

"Cool? I was thinking _hot._" Elliot said, conspiratorially.

"Oh hells yes. Smokin' hot." Candy nodded.

"You should see him with his shirt off."

"I'd love to see her with her shirt-_what_?"

"What?"

"The fuck do I care what he looks like with no shirt? _She's _smokin' hot!"

"Right." Elliot snickered.

"I would totally do her!"

"Okay, fine. You're not gay. You're chances of doing her are approximately equal to Bruce's chances of doing _you."_

_"_Shut up. You don't know anything."

"I don't? Already done Bruce, have you?"

"Honest to God, this is sexual harassment!"

"Oh, cowboy up, Candy. This is real estate." Elliot added the juice carafe to the tray and headed back into the conference room. The moment he had gone, Candy plopped back down at his desk and hit the intercom button to listen in on the meeting.

* * *

Bruce liked to conduct business as though it were a social event. He passed out refreshments, made sure everyone was comfortable and schmoozed like the wind. So taken with his own charm and graciousness, he didn't notice that his clients were not impressed.

Veronica was so tense that she was getting fidgety, thinking _Any second now, he's going to tell us why we can't have that house_. Logan was getting more bored by the second. After ten minutes of listening to Bruce go on and on about interest rates, home appreciation rates, credit scores, mortgage types and options, he began to get irritated.

Marla kept her fat mouth shut.

After fifteen minutes, Logan had had enough.

"I don't understand what we're doing here." he interrupted Bruce, who looked stunned for a moment, not being used to getting cut off in mid phrase.

"Well no, young man, I don't suppose you do." He said, smiling patronizingly. "The whole process, what with interest rates, points, mortgage insurance, taxes, etc. etc. can get very involved and complicated. I'm trying to explain it in a way that you _can_ understand."

Veronica frowned indignantly and was about to speak but Logan went on. "I don't give a fuck about any of that. Didn't Marla tell you what we want?"

"I...she..." Bruce looked at Marla, who blandly smiled. "What do you mean?" he finally asked.

"I'm not buying a mortgage, I'm buying that house, and I'm buying it _now." _Logan reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper, which he threw into the center of the conference table. "There's my accountant's number. He's waiting for your call telling him where to electronically transfer 1.7 million dollars into whatever accounts you need it. Get Mrs. Blakely on the horn and tell her to fork over the deed, the keys and get out. Call me when it's taken care of and you've got a transfer of title for me to sign. It's bad enough you've wasted a half hour of my time but you're making my wife nervous. Don't ever do that again." He stood and offered Veronica his hand. "Come on, Veronica; there's a gorgeous afternoon going to waste out there."

With a huge grin, Veronica took his hand and stood. At the door, Logan turned back to the table. He pulled his wallet out and tossed several hundred dollar bills on the table. "That's for the upstairs comforter. I think we ruined it."

Bruce stared after the retreating young couple, blowing out his cheeks but unable to form any words, oblivious to Marla and Elliot high fiving each other behind his back. Marla took the slip of paper from the center of the table, and began dialing.

"_beeeotch!" _Candy's voice chortled over the intercom.

To be continued...


	4. Chapter 4 Moving In

Chapter 4 Moving In

"Hey, Dad!" Veronica said into the phone.

"Hey Kiddo, tell me," Keith asked. "Do I have a place to stay?"

"We got it!" she squealed. "Oh Dad! Wait till you see it! It's so cool and there are three big bedrooms in the house itself and a complete apartment with a kitchenette and a bathroom over the garage! Any time you're ready to shake the dust of Neptune off your feet and come to the Midwest, we've got your place."

"Really, Veronica. I don't think your husband would be too thrilled with the idea of me living over his garage."

"Come on, Dad. You know Logan adores you and what else are we going to do with all that space? It's not like we could ever rent it out; you know it takes Logan about two years to move anyone from the 'stranger who may be taking pictures and notes' to the 'person I can stand to have around' category. Most people never make it. They go straight from being under suspicion to being dismissed. I don't know if you've noticed this about my beloved but he's kind of a misanthrope. It's actually one of the things we bonded over. The fact that you moved into the 'trustworthy friend' category in only two years is a testament to your awesomeness."

"Two years? When, exactly, do you think this process began? Because I've known Logan for ten years, now."

"Well you spent the first few years in the 'adult in position of authority and therefore to be avoided at all costs' category, then you were the entire 'person who's trying to destroy my best friend's family' category, although I quickly joined you there. Then of course, there was the very brief period when you were 'my girlfriend's father, who may or may not be watching us through a rifle mounted scope', followed by…oh, _years_ of swinging between 'girlfriend's dad who threw me out of the house' and 'dad who is grateful I saved his daughter's life'. It's complicated."

"You left out the part where I was 'guy who accused my father of murder'."

"Actually, that part leap-frogged you over years of suspicion right into the 'trustworthy person whom I would like to have think well of me' category. That lasted even through another 'dad who threw me out' phase. You _know_you and I are the first people who ever believed Logan about Aaron. Well, who believed him and did anything about it, anyway. My point is that you two have been tight as homies since the night...Liam Fitzpatrick was shot."

Veronica had been trying for years not to outright lie to her father anymore. Ever since the night she told him about the sex tape of herself and Piz that had circulated on campus email, she had made a conscious policy of transparency with Keith. But the truth about who had killed Liam Fitzpatrick was not hers to tell. The official report was that Leo D'Amato had killed the son of a bitch and forensics backed it up. Leo, Logan and Veronica were the only people who knew the truth and although Veronica would never betray them, she couldn't bring herself to perpetuate the falsehood by saying "the night Leo shot Liam Fitzpatrick" to her father.

"I always thought a road trip was a good way to get to know someone," Keith said, "and when Logan and I chased after you into the desert, we got to know each other pretty well."

"He thinks you're the best. He took your name, Dad. I don't think he'd begrudge you the garage."

"Have you asked him?"

"No…"

"Look, Honey. As much as I miss you, my work and my life are here. I have no plans to relocate to the Midwest. I'm too old to learn how to survive winter."

"No, you're not."

"I'm happy to know you have plenty of room for me to visit."

"Promise you'll come for Christmas."

"I was thinking 'labor day'."

"I miss you too, Dad."

* * *

It had taken Bruce and Marla approximately three hours to get hold of the widow Blakely, present the offer, convince her that it was real, get the papers in order, talk to Logan's accountant, get the Mars back in the office, sign the papers and pay out the money.

Bruce had agreed to let Marla handle the young couple when they returned.

"I don't think they like you, Brucie, darling." Marla told him. So it was that Marla briefly commandeered Bruce's lovely offices and Candy was overjoyed to be assisting her.

"Even so," Marla said after Logan and Veronica had signed everything, "Legally, the house won't be yours until I file this with the state, which I will do the second the offices are open Monday morning."

"Well, where the hell are we supposed to sleep tonight?" Logan said, tossing his pen in exasperation.

"I…uh…" Marla stammered.

"I'm kidding." Logan immediately assured her, feeling like a jackass for putting her on the spot.

"You'll have to excuse him," Veronica apologized. "He's kind of a jerk that way."

"I am." Logan nodded. "I really am. I'm actually very impressed; you guys moved at warp speed. I had no idea you'd be able to do all this so quickly. I could really get used to having clout."

"I was going to offer you my guest bedroom!" Marla laughed.

"I was gonna offer you mine," Candy said, throwing a dirty look at Marla from beneath his swinging bangs. "But I don't have one."

"Where's Elliot?" Veronica asked.

"He's arranging with the staging company to remove all the furniture by Monday. Normally, Bruce would do it, since he hired them but he had to grapple with Mrs. Blakely and of course, you're my assignment, so Elliot volunteered."

"I'm sorry!" Veronica said "We never meant to be so much trouble."

"Sure we did." Logan looked at her.

"This has been, without a doubt, the most fun I've ever had selling a house." Marla said.

"Even though you had to work with…?" Veronica indicated Bruce's office.

"Are you kidding? That was the frosting on the cake!"

* * *

On Sunday night Veronica was packing up her suitcase, preparing to check out of the tacky little motel she'd been living in for the past week.

"Make sure my Dad gets all the stuff I boxed up to bring here." She said to Logan, who was lying on the bed, watching her. "I know he wants to keep reminders of me around, and I left him plenty. But the stuff I packed, I need."

"No can do."

"What? Why not?"

"I'm not going back." He smiled. "I'm staying here. You have to be at work in the morning, you don't have time to move us in. Someone needs to hook up the cable, the Internet, talk to the utilities…there's actual stuff involved in moving into a new house. We don't own any furniture."

"What do you know about all that stuff?" she demanded. "You've been living in a hotel since you were seventeen. I didn't think you knew how to do laundry, much less talk to utility companies."

"Of course I know how to do laundry! Set it out in the hall and by morning the laundry fairies bring it back clean. Same way it worked at home when I was a kid. I wasn't wasting _all _my time while you were here. I've had a few conversations with actual grown up people who know things. And yes, I mean your Dad."

"Well, who's gonna get all our stuff?"

"JR."

"Jeff? Logan, he graduated. He's not going to want to be your personal attendant anymore."

Jeff Ratner had worked at the Neptune Grand since he was sixteen. He had crossed Logan's path when Logan had moved into the Presidential Suite with Duncan Kane after Logan's house had burned to the ground near the beginning of their senior year. Duncan had skipped the country half way through the year, leaving Logan the sole occupant of the suite. Ratner had been a fly on the wall throughout the drama of Logan's senior year. Both had enrolled at Hearst College and after Logan's disastrous episode with the reporter, Norman Phipps, their relationship began to slowly change from VIP Hotel Guest and Lowly Hotel Employee to Rich Kid who needs favors and Poor Kid willing to perform them. Somewhere along the line, Jeff began to see Logan as a Hounded Reluctant Celebrity and himself as Logan's Buffer to the World. Logan, meanwhile, had come to think of Jeff as not only trustworthy, but as one of the half dozen people on Earth that he could stand to have around. By the time of graduation, their relationship was very much like Bruce Wayne and Alfred, if Alfred were the same age as Bruce and both were unrepentant smart asses.

"Sure he is." Logan said. "Not everyone with a degree in criminology and psychology gets recruited into a fancy pants federal agency right out of school, you know. Besides, I'm paying him more than the feds are paying you."

"To do what?" She demanded.

"The laundry?"

Veronica laughed, shut her suitcase and jumped onto the bed beside him. "Well, I'm glad he's willing to haul our crap half way across the country for us!" she said. "Especially if it means I don't have to wait any longer to get you all to myself. You have no idea how awful it's been, living in this dump for the last week, knowing you were out there, all alone."

"It was pretty crappy back in Neptune, too." He put an arm around her and pulled her close. "I like this place. Reminds me of the Camelot."

"Yuck." She snuggled next to him.

"I have some fond memories of that crab shack. You changed my life there, remember?"

"You were supposed to die there, remember?"

"I knew you'd never let that happen." He wrapped both arms around her.

"Rescuing you did seem like the polite thing to do, seeing how often you'd rescued me."

"It's what I live for."

"Well, I wasn't about to let Gory Sorokin feed you to the rats!"

"My hero." Logan sighed and batted his eyes but Veronica frowned.

"You know, that's another reason I'm glad you took the name Mars," she said. "Makes it that much less likely that he'll ever be able to find you again."

"I'm married to a bad ass FBI agent! Not even a moron like Gory is dumb enough to tangle with me now. Besides, his Uncle Lev promised he'd never bother us again and he seemed like a gent who means what he says. He never did come back to Hearst."

"Revenge is a dish best served cold."

"Oh, I like that. Did you find that old book of inspirational quotes I used to have? I thought it went up in smoke with everything else."

"What if Gory is willing to wait twenty years? What about when Uncle Lev is dead and Gory is the head of the Russian mob? What if he comes after you then?"

"Veronica, I spent an entire afternoon with him. As captivating as he was, that guy doesn't have the brains, fortitude or attention span necessary to pull off what you're talking about. I promise; if he ever shows his ugly face around here, I'll shoot him myself."

Logan spoke lightly but Veronica lifted herself up and looked him in the eye. "Minnesota is a shall-issue state." She said.

"You want me to get a gun permit?"

"You can carry concealed."

"Would you sleep better at night, knowing that at any time, I could be armed?" He asked and when she nodded he said "You're the only person who's ever known me who would."

She laid her head back on his chest. "Sometimes I think I _am_ the only person who's ever known you. We're going to need a bed."

"Taken care of. Sleep Number, California king. They're delivering it between noon and two tomorrow."

"We don't have any linens. See, this is the drawback to not having a big deal wedding; no presents."

_FLASHBACK_

_Keith and Veronica Mars walked up the steps to the Balboa County Courthouse. It was early on the Monday morning after Hearst College Commencement; an hour before actual office hours._

"_Dad, I'm so glad Judge Ruedy was willing to do this for us!" she said._

"_I still have friends in high places. Bill's known you since you were a kid. He was happy to do this."_

"_He's known Logan for quite a while too. Didn't he arraign him once or twice?"_

"_Yeah but he's also privy to the details of those cases and the fact that Logan was innocent of all charges. Don't worry! This isn't a set up." Keith shook his head, unable to believe that __this__ was his daughter's concern on her wedding day._

_Inside the Judge's chamber, Logan was waiting with his brother, Charlie. A few moments later, they were joined by Wallace and Mac, Veronica's Man-of-Honor and attendant. When Veronica had first asked Wallace to stand up for her, he had been hesitant._

"_Superfly, in all the years you been asking me for favors, I been wondering where to draw the line but I never dreamed it would be wearing a puffy dress and carrying a bouquet."_

"_There will be no puffy dresses and no bouquets. Just one, tasteful flower tucked behind your ear…No?" she rolled her eyes. "Fine. We're actually keeping this on the down low. It'll be you, me, Dad, Logan and Charlie. Next to Logan, you're my oldest friend, Wallace. For a long time, you were my only friend. And Logan loves you, too. I can't do this without you." _

"_Who said anything about not being there? I'm GONNA be there. You saying there's gonna be no hoop-de-do? Why not? You and Logan finally making it legal is cause for celebration."_

"_We're not remotely interested in the hoop-de-do of a wedding. We just want to be married. We want it to be personal. Private. You know how Logan is."_

"_Yeah. Boy's got a reason to be that way. Never known anyone who had to keep paying for the sins of his youth like that guy. Every damn year…"_

"_More like the sins of the father."_

"_Like I said; boy's got a reason. You too, for that matter."_

"_Exactly."_

"_But three people? At your wedding? That's just sad."_

"_Are you kidding? I'm totally stoked that we found three! Actually, that was an exaggeration, there are more people invited than just you and Charlie."_

"_Oh, good."_

"_Mac and Dick are coming, too."_

_Dick had been unable to make it to the court house that early in the morning but he joined them for the wedding brunch afterward, bringing his wife, Melinda and sister in law, Heather. It had been a wonderful day, at the end of which, Veronica and Logan had taken his yacht to Catalina, making up for their aborted first date, which Veronica had ruined by standing Logan up._

"_I've wanted to take you on a champagne cruise to Catalina and screw your brains out for six years," he growled in her ear as they walked down the pier to Logan's slip. "And now I'm finally gonna do it!"_

"_You're gonna screw my brains out for six years?" she dropped her jaw in amazement._

"_If that's what it takes…"_

_END OF FLASHBACK_

"I'll buy you all the presents you could ever want." Logan said, kissing her. "The house is just the beginning. My entire plan consists of spending the rest of my life making sure you have everything you could ever want."

"I already have everything I could ever want." She smiled up at him, running her hands through his hair.

"Except linens." He reminded her. Then he proceeded to make her forget her own name.

* * *

They were up and out of the motel room early Monday morning. Veronica only had time to grab a cup of coffee and a bagel at a nearby Bruegger's before heading to work, so after that, Logan kissed her in the parking lot and said "See you at home."

"Oh my God!" she bounced on her toes and grinned at him. "I'm so excited!"

"Try not to explode," he warned her, kissing her again. "They might actually need you to do some work today."

"Yeah," she nodded. "Yeah. Good. Try not to explode. You'd better stop kissing me. Okay. See you at home."

Once she arrived at the office, it was fairly easy to calm down. The life of a rookie agent wasn't the most glamorous thing in the world. The huge stack of dossiers on her desk needing back ground checks soon dampened Veronica's excitement. Three years of interning plus her three years as a licensed P.I., not to mention all the years she had spent investigating for her father before she got her own license had inured Veronica to the drudgery of the work. She knew, better than most, that investigating was far more often a matter of going through paperwork with a fine toothed comb than chasing down miscreants with a gun. She had once heard the job described as 99% boredom and 1% terror and that seemed about right to her, although if the research aspect of the job had really bored her, she would be doing something else professionally. Being naturally nosy, she enjoyed it, even if it didn't reek of excitement. She had no intention of being a bullpen drone forever, of course. She wanted field work. She knew she excelled in the field and all she needed was an opportunity to shine. She was willing to wait for it, but not forever.

By putting Logan, the house and all the exciting new changes in her life out of her mind, the morning actually passed quickly. During her lunch break, she called Logan.

"How's it coming?" she asked. "Having buyer's remorse?"

"Not at all. Marla met me here this morning with a magnum of champagne, which I have put on ice for tonight. Candy came by with a box of steaks, courtesy of Bruce the Bitch; Candy's words, not mine. Have you ever heard of the Aveda Institute?"

"Uh, yeah. Aveda products are high end, all natural cosmetics and hair products. Why?"

"Well, I guess the institute is right here in town and Candy's dream is to graduate, go to New York and do hair and makeup during fashion week, whatever that means."

"Sounds like you and Candy had quite a chat."

"We did. Get this; he's not gay."

"Do I even want to know why he told you that?"

"Long story but the punch line is; in the valley of the blind, a one eyed man is king."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning the only straight esthetician at fashion week will be marinating in pussy. Again, his words, not mine."

"That's…actually…_genius_."

"That's what I said!"

"It's also completely gross."

"Oh, we have tv and Internet hooked up."

"Already? Those guys are legendary for making people wait weeks for a service tech to show up!"

"I called the cable company and the satellite company, told them both I had talked to the other and said that whoever got here first got the job. They were finished hooking us up an hour ago. I gotta go buy some tv's. Where do you want 'em? I thought; big one in living room, small one in kitchen. Anywhere else? Bedroom?"

"Maybe in a guest bedroom but not in ours. '_Esthetician_'?"

"Cool word, huh? Oh, I'm putting one in the gym."

"An esthetician?"

"No, a tv."

"What gym?"

"I'm having a sparring ring and heavy bag installed in that big room in the basement! Isn't that a great idea?"

"What if I wanted a sewing room?"

"I'd think I had a wrong number and a very pleasant conversation with a total stranger. Then I'd ask her what she was wearing."

"Why do we need one in the living room?"

"A total stranger?"

"A television. There's that media center downstairs."

"That's for movies. I don't want to play video games down there. I like the view of the lake. This way, you can watch the news while using the treadmill."

"We're getting a treadmill?" suddenly a gym didn't seem like a bad idea.

"Eventually. It's gonna snow here, you know."

"Okay but not too big a tv in the living room. I don't want it to compete with the fireplace."

"Babe, do you remember this fireplace? The alps couldn't compete with this thing."

"Don't call me 'babe'."

"Sugar Britches?"

"See? Doesn't that have a more professional ring to it?"

After she had said goodbye, she sat at her desk for a few moments, staring into space. One of her co-workers noticed.

"Hey, Agent Newlywed," Agent Stephanie Tuski teased from her desk. "Do I even have to ask what's on your mind?"

"Oh, no…" Veronica laughed. "I was just talking to…my…"

"Yeah, baby!" Tuski laughed. "What's he like, this young man who can put that look on your face?"

"What's he like? Well, this morning, he made the cable company sit up and beg."

"No shit?" Stephanie Tuski was impressed. "I _hate_ those fuckers."

* * *

That evening, Veronica pulled her Audi up into her very own driveway for the first time and parked in the garage beside Logan's extremely yellow Ferrari. He met her on the back patio with a kiss and a glass of champagne. So far, all they had in the house were several flat screens and an enormous bed (with new linens) and the suitcases they'd been living out of for the last few days. They stood at the Island in their beautiful new kitchen and ate the rotisserie chicken Logan had bought for dinner off of paper plates.

"What about the steaks?" she asked. "You said Candy brought steaks."

"They looked too good for paper plates. Also, meat like that needs to be cooked over an open flame. I have to get us a grill."

"Excellent!" Veronica knew that while Logan may be a novice in the kitchen, he had known his way around a grill since the days when the fab four had spent evenings together around his pool whenever Aaron was on location. It made Veronica sad to remember that she had never wondered, back in those days, why they only hung out at Logan's house when Aaron wasn't around. Logan had tried to show Duncan the ways of the grill when they ate at Kane's, but Duncan showed no aptitude or interest and it had usually wound up being Jake and Logan in charge of the outdoor kitchen. Again, it had never occurred to her at the time but now she realized that everything Logan knew about cooking out, he had probably picked up from Jake, not Aaron. It was the memory of the two of them in Kane's back yard that had, in part, convinced Veronica to go to Jake for help back when Logan had gotten into trouble with Gory Sorokin. Veronica and Jake Kane would never be friendly again, but his help in that matter had gone a long, long way toward alleviating the strained relationship.

When they finished eating, they went online and shopped for kitchenware. It was a new and exciting experience for Veronica; they chose what they liked and hit _add to cart_ without even looking at the bottom line.

Logan, who had grown up able to shop with impunity, would have become quickly bored if he hadn't enjoyed Veronica's enthusiasm so much. He encouraged her to go wildly overboard but her innate practically and years of frugal living reined her in. She was willing to buy Calphalon cookware and Wustof knives, but he couldn't talk her into buying anything she didn't think they would actually use.

He was far more interested in describing to her what he had done that day, after the practical matters of the morning had been taken care of. He had explored the neighborhood beyond the parkway and discovered that they were very close to some serious commercial areas. He had found two different grocery stores, a rib joint that featured live music, and a district packed with hip bars that catered to young professionals.

"So we'll be sure to stay away from _there,"_ he'd said.

He'd found a hardware store nearby, a patio furniture store and a warehouse that sold everything from furniture to baby clothes.

"That's where I bought the shit for the bed. It's all I got today. I knew we'd need that right away. I picked up a couple towels, too. We don't have any, do we? I didn't know if you wanted me to just start getting stuff, or if you wanted to do it, too?"

"I don't think I'll have any time. If we look at things on line, you'll get an idea of what I like and then you can shop your little heart out." She told him. "Good job on getting towels. We don't have any. What color did you get?"

"Yellow." His tone clearly said _what other color is there?_

"_Yellow?"_ she grimaced, thinking of the earth toned bathroom.

"Yellow is the safest color for towels," he said, just to see the look on her face. Then he laughed, "They're dark green. They look good with the tile work in our bathroom. Come on up and see."

"Is this your way of luring me upstairs?" she asked. "We're married now; you can just throw me over your shoulder."

"I didn't think it was a good idea to manhandle a woman with a firearm."

She pointed across the kitchen to the far counter, where she'd dropped her shoulder holster the moment she got home.

He threw her over his shoulder and took her up to see the new towels.

* * *

Early morning sunlight coming through the high windows on the East side of the master bedroom woke Veronica before her alarm went off. She opened her eyes for the first time in her big empty house. Turning her head slightly, she smiled to see the sleeping face of her husband a few inches away. Looking around, she giggled. They were surrounded by acres of bed but they had gravitated toward each other and were snuggled together on about three feet in the middle of it. Logan's right hand and forearm lay heavily across Veronica's hips.

She looked around the room. The Eastern wall, which was the front of the house, had a row of square windows going across it, about five feet off the floor. Morning light was pouring through them but they were so high up they needed no coverings.

The Northern side of the room was divided in three; two large walk in closets, one at either end with a sitting area between them featuring a window seat and a window that reached all the way to the ceiling, looking out into the tree tops of the woods just north of the house. The Western wall featured two large windows overlooking the back yard with enough space between them for the king sized bed.

It was the Southern wall of the bedroom that was Veronica's favorite. Not only did the stone of the massive fireplace directly below continue up through the house, but another, smaller fireplace opened up in the master bedroom. The door to the master bath was to the right of this hearth and the huge bathroom took up the space behind the fireplace and stairway. The bathroom was the most luxurious Veronica had ever seen. In addition to two sinks with plenty of vanity space, a large dark cherry linen closet and a glassed in shower big enough for both of them, a Jacuzzi tub sat beneath a treated window overlooking the back; they could see out but no one could see in. The entire room was in neutral natural stone and tile but radiant heating in the floor would keep it from ever feeling cold when winter came. Two green towels hung on a towel bar that heated up when the furnace was on.

It struck her as a little bit odd that the closets were on the far side of the room from the bath, but she smiled thinking of how much Logan would enjoy watching her traipse naked from one to the other. Her smile widened when she thought how much she would enjoy watching him.

She looked at the two closets and frowned. Each was nearly as big as the bedroom in her father's apartment that she had so recently moved out of.

_I will never own enough clothes to fill one of those. There must be a better way to use that space._

As she frowned, contemplating the excessive closet space, she became aware that the arm across her hips was moving, pulling her even closer and tighter against the warm body next to her. She turned and looked directly into Logan's eyes and she smiled.

_Nothing on Earth looks as good as Logan when he's happy._

For the rest of the week, Veronica went to work in the morning while Logan explored the city and began furnishing their house. They ate dinner when she got home from work and then went for walks around their lake and sometimes down the parkway to Lake of the Isles or Lake Calhoun. Veronica ordered things they needed on line after their walks and by midweek, things began arriving via UPS. By the end of the week, they had dishes and flatware and their kitchen was beginning to look operational. She laughed at Logan's priorities; he got himself a gorgeous gas grill and a dining set and lounge chairs for the patio outside and a pair of large, comfortable arm chairs and an ottoman for the living room and declared himself finished. She had to admit, that did seem to be enough to get them through the summer.

This Idyllic existence lasted four days.

Veronica arrived home from work on Thursday to find her honeymoon home under siege and threatened with invasion.

She pulled into the drive and stopped. Her way was blocked by a large moving van and workers unloading furniture. It wasn't new furniture and they weren't carrying it into the house, but up the stairs to the apartment above the garage.

She got out of the car just as Logan came bouncing down the garage stairway.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Hey, Sugarpuss, isn't it great? JR's here!" As he spoke, she noticed Logan's black Range Rover in the garage. "That van will get out of the driveway as soon as they're done moving in his stuff."

to be continued...


	5. Chapter 5 Entourage

Chapter 5 Entourage

"But _why _are they moving Jeff's stuff into the garage? Why?" Veronica asked Logan.

"I don't want his shit in our_ house_." Logan said.

"This IS our house!" Veronica pointed at the garage. "This is part of our property!"

"I know. Close enough to be on hand, but everyone still has their privacy. It's perfect."

"Why are you talking to me as if everything you say makes sense and I'm the one being unreasonable and moving my buddy into our garage _without so much as a howdy-do?"_

"A howdy-do? We talked about this. I told you JR was coming. And he's not my 'buddy'; he's my employee." Logan said. Veronica stared blankly back at him. "Laundry?" he prompted.

"You're shittin' me." She replied.

"Potty mouth!" Logan admonished.

Just then, the man in question came down the garage stairway. He yelled some directions over his shoulder at the movers regarding where to put some boxes. He jumped the last three stairs and in a bound was over next to the couple.

"Hey, Mars!" he greeted Veronica. "Special Agent Mars. That is so cool! 'Freeze! Federal Agent!' Done any of that yet? No? Well, I'm sure you will. I'm sure if they only knew, all the bad guys would be shaking in their boots."

"Hey, Jeff!" Veronica cocked her head at an angle anyone who had known her for more than ten minutes would recognize as dangerous. "What the fuck are you doing, moving into my garage?"

"Yeah," Jeff looked back at the garage and nodded. "Nice place. You don't have to worry about ol' Moneybags anymore. I'm here to make sure he doesn't burn the house down."

"He's not gonna burn the house down."

"Sure about that? Has he actually tried to plug in anything yet? You know he's completely incapable of taking care of himself."

"He's doing just fine, taking care of himself and the house. And me." Veronica answered Jeff.

"Oh sure, for what; three days? Give him a week and he'll come apart at the seams. He wasn't raised like you and I were; he doesn't know the first thing about life outside the cocoon. He's like a pampered show dog; you can teach him to sit up and speak but he'll never be able to feed himself or brush his own teeth."

"I can hear you." Logan said matter of factly.

"I shudder to think what would happen if he ever finds out there's no room service in the outside world." Jeff went on, ignoring Logan. "There really oughtta be a special class of mental retardation to describe the obscenely rich."

"I'm standing right here." Logan pointed out.

"Calm down, Admiral," Jeff said, soothingly. "You know perfectly well you're incompetent."

"I am not."

"Yes. You are." Jeff turned to Veronica. "He is. He needs a keeper and I've been doing it for years. I know he has you now and believe me, no one is happier about that than I am. I would've danced at your wedding, had I only been invited." At this, he stopped and stared at Logan for a beat before continuing. " But let's be realistic, Mars; you have a job. You have responsibilities. You won't be here all day to keep him out of trouble. Do you really want to leave _this_," he hooked a thumb at Logan, "alone to fend for himself all day? Every day? The over/under on how long he'd last is a month. Personally, I think that's generous. I think an orangutan with brain damage has a better chance of making it a month."

"You were invited to our wedding." Logan said. "You couldn't come because you were out of town that day."

"BECAUSE YOU SENT ME." Jeff glared at Logan.

"I HAD THINGS THAT NEEDED TO BE DONE." Logan answered.

"STOP." Veronica interjected. "You guys think if you can make me laugh I'll forget that I'm mad! Jeff, I appreciate that you're willing to continue…whatever it is you do for him but …why? Why would you want to?"

"He pays very well."

"Seriously, you were a great student! You would make an excellent investigator. There's no way you want to spend all your time babysitting a grown man, no matter how incompetent!"

"I can hear you, too." Logan looked at his wife.

"Relax, Veronica." Jeff laughed. "I'm not sure I even _want _to be a cop. The FBI didn't want me. Private Investigation seems like a cool avenue but right now I have student loans to pay. Moneybags here pays well and let's face it; even a PI as good as Keith Mars can have trouble covering the nut."

"Well…" she sighed. "I really do appreciate you driving Logan's SUV across country for us. We'll talk more, later." Then she turned and looked at Logan. "You and I will talk _now." _

With that, she turned and stalked into the house. JR looked at Logan. "Got your back?" he asked.

Logan just shook his head and followed his angry little wife into the house.

* * *

"What is going on and why didn't you tell me it was going to happen?" Veronica demanded the moment they shut the door to the backyard behind them. Logan walked through the sun room to the living room and dropped into an armchair.

"I told you JR was bringing the Range Rover. I told you I wanted him to keep working for me. I may have neglected to mention I was putting him in the garage. Where did you think he was gonna stay?"

"You didn't 'neglect' to tell me, you left it out on purpose! Why?" She stood in front of him, arms crossed, glaring angrily down at him.

"I didn't want you to do something rash."

"Rash? _Rash? _You mean like moving someone into our house without telling you, much less _asking_ you? Is this our house Logan, or do I just live here with you?"

"It's ours."

"Well, how would you feel if Wallace just showed up at the breakfast table some morning and I said 'oh, Wallace lives here, now'?"

"Fair point. I should have asked, I didn't think of it that way. I set all this up with Jeff before we bought the house so it seemed more academic, not personal. I'm sorry. Before we moved in, it didn't seem like a big deal and after we did…I could totally see your point of view."

"So why didn't you tell me right away? It's not like you haven't had a chance."

"I knew that you'd be pissed off."

"Did you think you could just _hide him back there? _That I wouldn't find out?"

"No, not at all. It's just…" He crossed his ankles on the ottoman and looked guiltily out the windows at the lake.

"_What? _It's just _what?" _It made Veronica even angrier that he looked so comfortable.

"If there's anything in this world hotter than you; pissed off, I don't know what it is."

"You …you…_GET OFF _on making me mad?" she sputtered.

"It's a constant temptation I have to resist." He admitted, hanging his head and peeking at her.

"That actually explains a lot," she muttered. Then she took several deep breaths and tilted up her chin. "I am not. Pissed off." She said, frostily, which was quite a feat, what with the steam coming out of her ears.

"Well, I didn't want you calling him and telling him not to come." Logan said.

"What would have been so bad about me telling him not to come?"

"I need him."

"Why?" Her face looked tragic. "You have me, now."

"I don't need him like I need you," Logan reached out and pulled her onto his lap. "I don't need him for the will to live…" he kissed her neck. "I don't need him to make my every living moment a joy…" his hand slid…

"uhokay…stop it!" Veronica twisted out of his arms and stood up before he could make her eyes roll back in her head. _Damn, damn, damn , damn, daayaaammm. _

"You are _not _gonna distract me till this is over!" she insisted. "And then…well, then distract away."

"You have no idea how much JR helps me. It's been a blast taking care of things here but he's right. I have no domestic training. I know less about taking care of a house than your average seven year old girl. I pretty much shot my wad on what your Dad taught me by making sure the electricity didn't get shut off. And honestly V, I'm not that interested in learning. And I don't have time."

"Time? You don't have time? How much time does Gradeyourass take?"

"Gradeyour-? No, not that. It's the money."

"The money?"

"You just spent four years getting a degree proving you could do something you've been really good at since you were fifteen. I spent four years learning how to manage a fortune. Do you have any idea how much money we have? Believe me, keeping track of it is a full time job. And the way we found Charlie showed me how important it is not to leave it up to anyone else. I'm not saying I'll never hire someone to oversee the bulk of it but until I get a handle on it, until I feel like I know it like I know the back of your…back…it's my responsibility. And that's a full time job."

"How much money are we talking about?"

He told her and she sat down on the floor.

"Oh, come on, it's still nowhere near as much as Duncan is worth, somewhere." He grinned.

"No, but it's…more than I thought. A lot more."

"Yeah, there's no overestimating the depravity of the movie going public. Sales of Aaron's dvd's have gone through the roof since he... Trina had the option of cashing out her half of the inheritance without waiting for my part of the trust to wind up. Being greedy and short sighted, she opted for hers immediately. Since I was a minor, I couldn't get at mine. The result is that the half of the fortune being held for me grew exponentially in the three years before I inherited. Trina's impatience cost her; big time."

"What…what do you do with that kind of money?"

"Besides pay cash for sweet cars and cool houses? You invest it. Then you spend a lot of time keeping an eye on said investments, and researching your options. At the moment, we're heavy into Kane Software and it's doing very well."

"Yeah…they're responsible for the video capabilities of the new smart phones…" Veronica said, suddenly realizing what the success of the software meant to them. "Oh, my God." She jumped back to her feet and began pacing around the room.

"Don't freak out or anything." He laughed a little. "That's part of why I didn't want to go into all this. I guess I just kind of hoped you'd be okay with JR moving in."

"Logan, you know you don't have to run everything you do by me and you certainly don't need my permission for things but you can't just move _people_ into our _home _without so much as bringing it up! You should have at least asked, or even said, at _some point, _'I'm moving my...valet/butler/man Friday into the garage! You can't act as though this sort of thing is none of my business."

"You're right. I'm sorry. Can I keep him?"

"Why is he even interested? Waiting on you was an easy side job for him during school, but he's…he could be doing so much more than that."

"It wasn't that easy. Someone told me recently that there's a recession. Apparently, charming young men willing to pay top dollar for overqualified assistants are now a plum gig."

"What exactly, is he going to do around here?"

"Run errands. Do the grocery shopping, cook dinner occasionally, answer the phone, answer the door, call a plumber when we need one, make sure I get the bills paid on time, hire a cleaning crew to come in once a month, hire and deal with the lawn crew, help me with research, laundry. Get us drugs and hookers. The usual."

"Don't you think he's going to be bored to death in no time, acting as your…I don't know; housekeeper?"

"Didn't you think I would be? And JR wasn't wrong when he suggested that me, bored, was a dangerous thing to have around."

"That's different. You would've been taking care of your _own_ house, your own _life._ Once you got used to it, you'd have the time to…do whatever you want."

"Well, as I explained, JR is here so I can get on with my life without sweating the small stuff. He's here to grease the skids."

"I don't want you on the skids, greasy or otherwise."

"You know what I mean."

"What about our privacy? He's going to be here _all the time."_

"No. He's here to insure our privacy, Veronica. He's here to make sure no one finds out who I am. I may even set up an account with his name on it so he can pay our local bills, I haven't decided. As for _our _privacy, don't worry; I'm having a buzzer installed. He'll only be here when I need him. It'll be just like it was."

"Oh, like he was never in the suite with you."

"What? He's good at Strike Force Five. I kicked him out whenever you came over. Whenever you wanted me to, anyway."

Veronica's relationship with Jeff Ratner had begun in an adversarial manner, to say the least; he had tried to get her thrown out of school for plagiarism. He had pegged her as one of the stuck up girls to visit the Presidential Suite without ever noticing the little people who worked at the hotel. She had seen him on a weekly basis for over a year and still hadn't recognized him when they wound up in the same Criminology class.

Veronica had disliked Jeff for being a smart ass who wrongly accused her, in front of the entire class, of handing in less than original work. He had been wrong about her work but Veronica's innate honesty compelled her to admit that he had been right about the rest. After the hair raising events of their freshman finals week, when she had begun to see not only how much he did for Logan but how much Logan meant to him, her attitude towards the snarky bell boy had begun to soften considerably.

Since Jeff was also a Criminology/Psychology major, this was a good thing. He and Veronica shared more and more classes as the years went on and usually vied with each other for the top spot. Veronica prevailed more often than not but it wasn't until graduation day that she admitted to Jeff how hard he had made her work for it.

Jeff had still never told Veronica how hard she had made him work. Without Logan's permission, he never would.

"You know this isn't because I don't like him; I do." Veronica said. "That's part of why this arrangement bothers me. I don't want either one of you pissing away your potential."

"I assume you don't think Jeff is a bad influence on me, so does this mean you think-"

"No! No, I don't think you're going to corrupt him with your reprehensible ways and lack of morals. You know perfectly well those are two of your finest qualities. I just don't …I don't know. Don't you think moving him into the garage is maybe, making things too easy for him?"

"Well, God forbid he should ever have it easy! He's my _aide, _Veronica. He's of no use to me if I can't reach him. How are we going to have any privacy at all if we can't toss him out on a whim? Putting him in the garage apartment is the best of all possible situations; he's close enough to be at my beck and call 24/7 and close enough to be chucked out the second after he serves us our dinner."

"Is that the arrangement?"

"You have a lot to learn about the ways of the super rich, pumpkin."

"Does he get benefits?"

"Medical and dental, yes. He'll have to find his own girlfriends."

"Ew!" she said. Then she sighed. "What if my Dad wanted to come? I told him he could have the garage."

"You told your Dad he could move into the garage?" Logan's grin split his face. "Without asking me, first?"

"Shut up." She laughed. "I would have told you if he had expressed any interest at all."

"There is no way in hell I would ever let your dad move into our garage."

"WHAT?" she rounded on him, infuriated again.

"I would buy him a house, Veronica. One of those cute places you and Marla looked at."

"You'd buy him a _house?" _The tension drained out of her body so fast it almost made him laugh.

"I told you how much money we have," he sighed. "I could buy him a house that wasn't even that cute."

"Well, Dammit Logan!" She stomped her foot.

"What?"

"Here I am, all lathered up and ready to be angry and you go and say something wonderful and generous! What am I supposed to do with all this emotional energy?"

Logan had some pretty good ideas.

* * *

While Logan and Veronica worked out their…differences…in the house, JR went up the stairs to his new digs. It was a nifty space, designed for efficiency and comfort. The décor was different from the house; it was clearly supposed to evoke a lake cottage feel. The garage sat at the back of the lot, in the Southwestern corner. The drive curved from the street around the perimeter of the lot. It was a long driveway. The lot was deep and wide and the concrete drive curved along the North and Western edges of it, enclosing two sides of the large, grassy lawn. The Northwestern corner of the lot where the drive curved was filled in with a beautiful flower garden featuring a small fountain. Near the garage itself, the drive widened considerably, making room for the four vehicle bays. JR and Logan had already discussed the opportunity for full court basketball back there.

The stairs went up inside the garage at the Eastern end. A landing and the apartment's front door lead directly into a sitting room which had a large picture window view, past the house, of the lake. The high pitched ceilings were all knotty pine with three fans spanning the length of the apartment. Knotty pine woodwork on the windows, base boards, doorframes and crown molding gave the place a lot of personality. Beyond the living room, an open galley kitchen and dining area took up the middle of the space and the Western end of the apartment was occupied by a large bedroom and a full bath. In addition to the picture window facing the lake, the apartment had four windows looking out over the back yard, several windows facing the lot to the south of the property and two skylights on the northern facing slope of the roof. The entire apartment was simple, filled with natural light and charming.

JR noticed none of that.

As far as he was concerned, it had a fridge, a toilet and a lock on the door. He was satisfied. He glanced around the room to see where the movers had put his desk. Walking over to it, he pulled open a drawer and tossed in his keys, his cell phone and his wallet.

Then he bent and removed the ankle holster he wore and tossed that in the drawer, as well.

* * *

"Everything cool?" he asked Logan the next morning after Veronica had left for work. He was cleaning up the breakfast dishes as Logan stood at the bar counter. They still hadn't gotten any barstools or a dining set.

"It's fine. You can stay." Logan said, reading the news on his laptop. "Just don't piss her off."

"What did you tell her?" JR finished loading the dishwasher and wiped off the counter. "Hey!" he flicked the back of Logan's monitor. "Concentrate; what did you tell her?"

"I told her the truth, or at least as much of it as she needs to know." Logan shrugged.

"Fuck, Moneybags! Tell her everything." JR pleaded. Logan looked up at him, frowning.

"Fine." JR gave in. "What _exactly _did you tell her?"

"I told her that you're going to continue working for me like you have for years. That you were gonna grease the skids for me. Free up my time."

"Did you tell her what you needed time to do?"

"No. It's not…I told her it was the money. I don't want to tell her about that until I know I can do it. It's…I might not be able to."

"I'm not about to argue the creative process with you; way out of my depth. Is that all you told her?"

"Yep." Logan said, deliberately, looking JR in the eye.

"Fine." JR said again. "Then I'll tell her the truth, too."

"You say one word you're not supposed to and I'll break your scrawny neck."

"Blah, blah, blah. Like I never heard _that _before."

"Want to play some Halo?" Logan shut his laptop.

"Do I have time?"

"You do if I say you do." Logan strolled out toward the living room where the video set up was.

"I love my job!" JR said, tossing the bar towel into the sink.

* * *

That evening, when Veronica got home, she found JR in the kitchen, dicing chicken. The house smelled wonderfully of cilantro, curry and something else. There was also a large bowl of strawberries next to the sink.

"Hey, Mars." JR greeted her. "The Admiral's still at the lake. He's trying out his wind surfing wings. He called and asked me to start dinner. Cajun curry chicken, spring salad and strawberry shortcake."

"God, that smells good." She said, dropping her purse on the island. "What's this?" she stopped, staring at the new furniture in her kitchen.

"You like 'em?" He nodded at the four metal barstools with leather seats now tucked neatly under the bar counter. "I thought you needed to be able to sit in here. If you hate 'em, I can exchange 'em for something else tomorrow."

"No," Veronica pulled one out and sat. "These are great. Comfy, too." Just then a buzzer sounded briefly.

"Ah, the shortcakes." Jeff popped on an oven mitt and pulled a tray of golden brown biscuits out of the oven.

"You cook _and _you bake?" Veronica was impressed.

"I've been living on my own for awhile. If I didn't cook, I wouldn't eat. Don't be too impressed," he nodded at the shortcakes. "I've found you can't really go wrong with Bisquick."

"Well, I may not be the Bisquick impresario you are," Veronica hopped off the barstool. "But I do know how to clean strawberries." She pulled a small knife out of the drawer and grabbed the bowl. "Have these been washed?"

"No. Have at 'em."

For a few moments, they worked in companionable silence, JR chopping chicken at the work station on the island and Veronica, rinsing and cutting strawberries by the sink.

"I'm sorry you found me here," JR said. "I'm under orders to do my best to finish up with all the house stuff before you get home. The Admiral doesn't want me to give you a chance to get pissed enough to sack me."

"I have the authority to sack?"

"Jeez, Mars. We both know he'd let you kill me and mount my hide on the wall if you really wanted to."

"No, actually, he wouldn't. You have no idea how often I've expressed that exact desire."

"Am I supposed to be surprised by that revelation? Did you know I had the same desire more than once?"

"Hell yes!" she laughed. "That's pretty much what I read in your face the day I met you."

"You mean the day I accused you of stealing your paper. We had met many times before."

"Yeah, whatever. I lost my ability to make a good first impression a long time ago."

"I never had that ability."

"Over rated." She shrugged. "But come on, once we got to know each other a little, you never seriously wanted to kill me, did you?"

"Yes. Yes, I did." He didn't elaborate but she laughed anyway. "But I'm glad I didn't." he laughed, too.

"Well, If Logan comes home someday to find that we've killed each other in a knife fight, it's all he deserves."

"Please. A knife fight? I think we both have a little more finesse than that."

"Yes. Plus, it would upset him, so let's at least try not to drive each other nuts." She said, cutting the top off another berry. "I'd really hate to have to plan another perfect murder."

"Well, don't forget; I kept notes on your shit. I could probably get away with it too."

"I don't doubt it. I don't _want _to have to can you. I have a feeling you'd become disgruntled and you're nothing if not tenacious, Ratner."

"Tenacious! That's exactly the word I would use to describe you." He laughed and pointed his knife at her.

"Why does no one ever use the words 'charming' or 'adorable'?" She sighed. "I prefer 'single minded' or 'determined'."

"All means the same thing. I like 'tenacious'. Tenacious D."

"What word would you use to describe poor old Landry?"

"Fucked."

"Oh, that's perfect. In so many ways." She shook her head. "How about Logan?"

"Too easy." JR looked at her and she grinned.

"Passionate!" she said as JR said "Lonely."

For a moment there was silence in the kitchen.

"How creepy would it have been if we'd said the same word?" Jeff quipped.

"Logan isn't lonely." Veronica challenged him.

"Not when you're around." He agreed but shrugged his shoulders.

"Alone is not the same as lonely."

"I know the difference."

"Logan has always been able to…snap his fingers and…_hundreds _of people show up." She went back to slicing strawberries with a vengeance.

"I know. I've seen it."

"Then how can you possibly say 'lonely'?"

"Why would he do that? Invite a hundred people, most of whom he can barely stand, into his place? Did you ever wonder about that?" JR looked over at her. She didn't answer but kept whacking at the berry on the cutting board in front of her. "If he just wanted to see his friends, he'd call you or Dick. He'd call Mac just to talk about that dumbass website. Look, I never knew him when he was 'Logan Echolls; King of the 09ers'. I hear he was a royal prick. I never saw it first hand. By the time I knew him, he was just a kid my age, with no family, living in a fucking hotel with his weird ass buddy. A couple months later, he was alone there, too. Watch it; you're not supposed to mince the strawberries."

"Well, you thought I was just a penthouse groupie." She grumbled, pulling another berry out of the bowl.

"Can you blame me? All I knew about you is that you spent the night with Duncan Kane and six months after Kane left, you were back. It's not like I _still _think that."

"But you still think he's lonely."

"Of course he's lonely, Mars. Why do you think he offered me this job? For what he's paying me, he could hire a real English butler."

"You know he doesn't like strangers."

"He doesn't like strangers." JR repeated sarcastically. "He's scared to fucking death of them! Do you think that cock sucker from Vanity Fair was the first? I mean, yeah, he was the first to actually pretend to be _related_ but you have no idea how many tried to weasel in by other means. They sucked up to his friends; they got jobs at the hotel, they tried to pick him up in the lobby, at the beach. They hung around outside the front door with telephoto lenses. Guy wasn't safe anywhere. Can you even imagine how isolating that must have been?"

Veronica had been sitting there, holding a strawberry in one hand and a knife in the other. She set them both on the cutting board when she realized her hands were shaking. JR, having finished with the chicken, washed his hands and picked up her knife and the berry she had put down.

"It gives me the willies to even try to put myself in that spot," he said as he began slicing berries. "No home, no family and the only guy left who you can trust is Dick Casablancas? Jesus."

"Dick's not so bad." Veronica said.

"No, he's okay. I'm not sure he could out think a duck but his heart's in the right place."

"It wasn't always."

"I'll bet. Those guys all grew up with money to burn and parents who should have been burnt at the stake. You and I were the lucky ones, Mars."

"Sounds like you pity him."

"No, I admire him. I pity his circumstances. He's a good guy."

"Lonely?" she asked, a crease between her eyebrows.

JR tossed the last of the strawberry slices into the bowl and dumped all the stems into the sink. Then he smiled at her.

"Not when he's with you." He said, and turned on the garbage disposal. After taking care of the sink, he slid the chicken into the oven.

"That'll be ready in half and hour," he told her. "Salad's in the fridge, along with chocolate sauce and whipped cream for the strawberry shortcake."

"Thanks, Jeff." She said. He had started for the back door but at that, he turned and looked at her with a half smile on his face.

"See, that's the thing," he said. "He _always _thanked me. Enjoy your dinner."

to be continued...


	6. Chapter 6 Saturday

Chapter 6 Saturday

Twenty minutes later, Veronica was just coming downstairs from changing into a comfortable pair of shorts and a tank top when she heard Logan come into the kitchen from the back yard.

He had just finished stowing his sail board in the garage. He looked tanned and tired from his afternoon on the water. His hair was sticking up in all directions and Veronica didn't think she had ever seen anything look so good. He caught sight of her as she came into the room and he smiled.

"It's not the same as surfing," he said as he went over to the refrigerator and pulled open the door, "But I'm getting the hang of it. Lots of upper body strength required. I'll be adding free weights to the arsenal downstairs." He pulled out the carafe of cold water he liked to keep there and chugged half of it. He put it back and closed the door, looking surprised when Veronica came across the room, grabbed him and kissed him passionately.

"Wow. _That's _nice to come home to!" he said, wrapping his arms around her.

"I love you!" she said, pressing her cheek against his chest. "I don't think I tell you that enough."

"Um…okay." He laughed a little and squeezed her.

"No, you don't get it," she said urgently "_I love you more than anything else in the entire world. _I need to know that you get that."

"I kind of assumed that's what the whole wedding thing was about." He assured her, stroking her hair. "Hey." He took her face in his hands and was startled to see tears in her eyes. "Where's this coming from? Why are you upset? Did something happen at work?"

"No, no. I'm not upset. Really, I'm not. It's just…everything is so perfect!" she waved a hand at the kitchen around them. "I just can't stand the thought that you don't know how much I love you."

"It is perfect, isn't it? Sure smells good in here."

"You can thank Jeff for all that. He was pulling strawberry shortcakes out of the oven when I got home."

"Did he say anything? Is that why you're upset? Was he talking about stuff that's none of his business?"

"No." Veronica looked up at Logan, surprised by the harshness of his voice. "We only talked about stuff that _is_ his business."

"Good. I don't want him to bother you."

"He doesn't bother me." She smiled. "I'm glad he's here. You're right; he will make things easier."

"Wow. Has the promise of strawberry shortcake always had this affect on you? Why didn't I know that?"

"It's not the dessert. I just…I saw you come through that door and you looked so happy and healthy and all of a sudden I just had to tell you how much I love you."

"Wow, does_ that_ sound like a come on."

She gasped and cocked her head and wrinkling her nose at him. "Does it?"

Needing no more encouragement, Logan scooped her up in his arms and carried her upstairs. He was getting good at navigating the stairway with his arms full of Veronica.

* * *

Later in the evening, JR was on his computer when a faraway sound registered in his brain. He sat up and listened.

"God damn it!" he said, and sprinted for the stairs. He was across the lawn in a moment. Three strides took him over the stone terrace to the back door leading into the kitchen. He could smell the ruin of his dinner before he burst through the back door; there were more than enough windows open for the smell of burnt curry to have drifted into the back yard. Grabbing an oven mitt, he wrenched open the stove and jumped back as smoke billowed out. Coughing, he pulled out the pan of black chicken briquettes, sizzling in what had once been a thick, delicious sauce. He tossed the pan in the sink and looked around for something to climb up on so he could pull the battery out of the screaming smoke detector. Using one of the new bar stools, he was able to reach the device and stop the racket. He glanced at the clock. The chicken should have come out of the oven two hours earlier. He had just jumped down from the stool when a very disheveled Logan, dressed only in boxers stumbled down the stairs, followed by an extremely rumpled Veronica in a bathrobe. They had both obviously been sound asleep.

Logan coughed and waved a hand in the smoky air. Veronica pushed a hand through her hair, causing more of it to stand upright and began coughing too. JR threw one disgusted look at the pair of them and stalked out the back door on the parting shot; "_NOT _gonna burn the house down, huh?"

Veronica started to giggle. Logan looked at her and said "Oh, we burned it down, all right."

Still laughing, Veronica kissed Logan then walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out the strawberries, whipped cream and chocolate sauce. She took a couple of large pasta bowls out of the cupboard and placed shortcake biscuits in each and began dumping strawberries on top.

Logan, seeing what she was doing, said in his best Doc Holliday, "...then again, you might be the Devil."

"If I am," she said, shaking the whipped cream and squirting it over the berries, "It's only what you deserve."

"And yet," He said, picking up the bottle of chocolate sauce, "I'm pretty sure you'd be even better covered in chocolate." He slipped the robe off her shoulders and pulled her tight against himself. She tried to push away from him but only succeeded in presenting an irresistible target for the chocolate syrup.

"How mad is Jeff gonna be if we leave this big a mess?" she protested, giggling.

"How disappointed is he gonna be if we don't?" Logan asked. Her protest changed to something else as he began licking off the chocolate.

* * *

The next morning was Saturday and Veronica didn't set her alarm. She woke up to the sensation of something warm and wet trailing across her shoulder and up her neck. She smiled when he whispered in her ear, "I think I missed a spot."

"I'm afraid to go downstairs," she said. "I meant to get up early and clean that mess but it must be…what time is it?"

"Don't care." He rolled her onto her back and studied the hollow of her throat. "I am only concerned with cleaning you up…" he dipped his head and she squeaked as he licked her clear across her collar bones. She ran her hands into his hair and pulled his face up to hers and kissed him.

"I could eat you alive." He murmured, pulling back just enough to look into her eyes.

"Okay!" she smiled.

* * *

Later on, they braved the kitchen and Veronica saw that there wasn't a trace of strawberry shortcake, whipped cream or chocolate on the floor, the island or any of the bar stools. The pan of burnt chicken was no longer steaming in the sink and every indication of the ruined dinner and private orgy from the night before had been erased from the house. There was a pitcher of fresh orange juice in the fridge and a bowl of nectarines and bananas on the counter.

"I don't know whether to be thrilled that the kitchen fairies cleaned up after us or mortified that we've been busted having sex all over the house." She said as Logan poured himself a glass of orange juice.

" Always go with option A." He said, drinking.

"How am I supposed to look Jeff in the eye after this?"

"What." He picked a nectarine out of the bowl. "You'll get over it. You can look the realtors in the eye and we did it in front of them before we'd even paid for the place. This is our house. We can fuck anywhere we want."

"Well, apparently, we want to everywhere!"

"Don't we?" He looked so disappointed that she couldn't help but laugh.

"I _do_ have a lot to learn about the ways of the super rich." She said, picking up a banana and waving it over her head at her imaginary servants. "Have this peeled!"

Logan ate his nectarine and picked up the newspaper off the counter. He glanced briefly at the front page and opened it up. Less than a minute later he dropped it and picked up the metro section, filled with local news.

"It must be Saturday," he said. "No Wall Street Journal. This rag is of no interest to me, at all…wait." A paragraph on the inside caught his attention. "Murder! Local working gal found dead. Sad. You know anything about this?"

"Murder isn't a federal crime," she shrugged, peeling her own banana. "That's for the local cops."

"But you love murder!"

"I love murder?" She pulled a bowl out of the cupboard. "For _breakfast?"_

"You know what I mean; solving them. Bringing evil doers to justice." he waved a hand vaguely over his head. " All that shit."

"I do love that." she sighed. " I really do. But these days, all my love is for background checks."

"Is that all they let you do? You never talk about work anymore."

"Anymore? It's been a week." She sat at the island and sliced the banana into her bowl. "I'm doing background checks, which apparently are a necessary and vital part of…I don't know. Homeland security?"

"Seriously, that's all? Don't they know how good you are? I'll bet you could find out whoever…" he glanced at the paper again, "'eviscerated'…_yuk…_this poor hooker, who most likely had a heart of gold, in no time at all."

"She shoulda known better than to flaunt her precious metal organs in a neighborhood like that. It says she was a hooker?"

"They kinda skim over that part but yeah," Logan glanced at the paragraph again, "who else gets gutted like a fish?"

"Well, that is a pretty dangerous job. If the feds went after hooker killers, it's all we'd ever do."

"Really?"

"Really." She poured Cheerios into her bowl. "And you don't even want to know how many of the dead ones are underage."

"Fuck!" Nothing bothered Logan more than kids getting hurt. Veronica sometimes shuddered to think what Logan would have done to the Mannings if it had been him instead of Duncan with her when they found Grace in the closet.

"Yep. It's a sick, sad world we live in."

"I should call Heather." Logan's four O'clock Friday online game of Mario Kart had morphed into an intermittent, email appointed assignation as Heather had entered high school and developed a social life but the two of them remained friends. Logan stood as the big brother Heather never had far more than Dick, her brother in law, did.

"How's she doing?" Veronica asked as she poured milk over her cereal.

"She has a boyfriend. I'm terrified."

"No way! A boyfriend? Isn't she like, thirteen?"

"She's fifteen."

"Still," Veronica shook her head. "too young for a boyfriend."

"You had a boyfriend at fifteen." Logan pointed out. "Hell, Lilly had tapped my keg by the time I was fifteen."

"You were a slut. '_Tapped_' your '_keg_'?"

"Yeah. I _was _a slut."

_Not as big a slut as Lilly _was the thought that went unspoken by each of them. They both loved Lilly Kane and the revelation that she had kept huge secrets from each of them had not changed that. They acknowledged her flaws but didn't dwell on them.

"Do you think…" Veronica hesitated. "If things had been different, do you think we'd still be here?"

"If Lilly had lived?" Logan was always more willing to honestly face their memories of Lilly than Veronica was. "We would still be right here. She'd just have a permanent invitation to stay."

"Really? You think so?"

"Yeah! Look; Lilly had already dumped me and DK had already dumped you. If Lilly had lived, my Mom still would have jumped off the bridge; I still would have asked you to help me; You still would have been there when I fell apart over her; I still would have been there when Jump Street abducted you—"

"Why would we have been on the phone?"

"Ummm...I would have been stalking you. Don't interrupt me again. Where was I? Oh, yeah—you still would've kissed me at the Camelot; we still would've fallen for each other like Thor's hammer, but-_But-" _He paused for dramatic affect.

"Ooh, a two big butt finish!" she bounced on her bar stool. "I can hardly wait!"

"Don't interrupt. If Lilly _hadn't_ died, _you_ would never have accused _me_ of murder; we would _not_ have broken up on the beach; I would _not_ have been on the bridge that night; Weevil would've had _no_ reason or opportunity to beat the hell out of me; I wouldn't have been anywhere _near _Felix when he got killed; you would _not_ have dumped me a second time and I would have been in the _right_ room the night you decided you were ready…"

"Instead of with _Kendall." _she snorted. "You know, we could hear you through the wall that night."

"Good. I was pretending she was you." He leaned over on the island, chin in hand and wagged his eyebrows at her. "Were you pretending he was me?"

"No." she blushed hotly and stared into her cereal bowl. "But I admit that after we ran into each other in the hall, it was _you _I had on my mind all night. 'If cuddling's the best part, he did it wrong.' I was so mad at you."

"I could have taken you away from him any time I wanted to." He said, smiling. "And I _wanted to._ But he was my best friend."

"Duncan wasn't a very good friend to you, was he?"

"Yeah, he was. As long as he could be. But if I could only have you or him, it's you. Every time."

"So, if Lilly hadn't died, you and I wouldn't have broken up and Meg would have been in the limo with us when the bus went into the ocean."

"I sincerely hope there is a Hell and that Aaron is roasting there, eternally."

"That's like…forever!" Veronica did her best Dick imitation.

"…Only worse!" Logan finished for her.

"Where do you think Beaver is?"

"I never think about Beaver." He said it so quietly she knew he was lying. She was sorry she brought him up.

"Do you think in some alternate universe, that's how it all played out?" She asked, trying to get the conversation back on lighter terms.

"Whatever. You gotta call Wallace if you want to talk theoretical physics. I'm not a big fan of the alternate universes. By those rules, there's some universe where Duncan never dumped you, you two live happily ever after and I spend eternity eating my heart out. Or worse yet, Lilly never dumped me and I live with _her." _He shuddered dramatically. "She'd already be banging the pool boy." Veronica laughed and shook her head.

Logan went on, "Lilly loved playing with fire. If it hadn't been Aaron, it would've been something else. Hell, if it hadn't been Lilly, he probably would've killed somebody else. Maybe you."

"I would _never have—"_

"No, no! I know. Maybe he'd have killed you for _that_. Odds are it would've been me."

"He wouldn't have killed _you_!" Even as she said the words, Veronica didn't believe them.

"Who knows?" Logan shrugged as though he were talking about whether or not it would rain that evening, not the possibility of dying at his father's hands. "I threatened to kill him the day Mom… a showdown was definitely coming. Who knows what the outcome would have been? Me; dead or in prison for patricide?"

"So you're saying that we would still be together even if Lilly had lived but…"

"I'm saying we would be together no matter what. And that this may be the best possible outcome." He shrugged. "And since this is the one we've got, I choose to believe that."

"We'd be completely different people if none of that had happened."

"Moot point. It happened."

"I said something very similar to Charlie, back when I met him, about you."

"You did?"

"Yep. And he accused me of being in love with you."

"Charlie's pretty sharp." Logan said. "You _were_ in love with me."

"Mm-hm. And I was sick of trying to hide the fact."

"When was this?"

"The day after you threw me out of the Neptune Grand and about a half hour before Liam Fitzpatrick grabbed me."

"Ah yes. Fun times. Much as I love reminiscing about the good old days, we've got _new _memories to create, so let's get at 'em. It's your day off. Wanna know what we're gonna do?"

"What are we gonna do?"She dropped her spoon into her empty cereal bowl and turned toward him.

"Buy us some bikes. We're surrounded by, like a hundred miles of bike paths. There's a shop right around here. I found it on line. Let's go boost the economy."

"Is that what we're doing? I thought we were conspicuously consuming." She giggled as he picked her up by the waist and swung her off the stool.

"Same thing." he said, dancing her through the kitchen. "It's called 'Capitalism' and I am its King."

"You really are."

* * *

They bought road bikes, racks, locks, saddle bags and water bottles at the cycle shop near Lake of the Isles. Logan refused to even look at helmets. Veronica bought a blue helmet for herself and told him that if he got in an accident and fractured his skull, not to come crying to her. They dropped the car off at home, dropped the saddle bags in the garage, filled the water bottles and took off. The bike paths around the lakes were all one way but they had many different routes to choose from. For their first expedition, they went left on Dean parkway toward Isles and from there followed the path around the lake, to Calhoun, where they stopped briefly to watch the sailboats and wind surfers. Logan told Veronica it was much less crowded during the week and therefore more fun to surf. They continued around that lake and up Williamberry parkway to Lake Harriet.

They were in no hurry, so they stopped at each pump, beach and attraction. Williamberry was a half mile stretch between Calhoun and Harriet, completely wooded all the way. At one point, they passed an archery range. Further up the hill, they crossed an overpass beneath which ran a track for an antique trolly car used as a tourist ride between the lakes. By Harriet, up the hill from the bandstand was a playground and picnic area.

There was nothing going on at the band stand. Little kids ran around on the stage while their moms sat talking on the benches in front. There were plenty of boats on Lake Harriet, too. On the East side of Harriet, they stopped again at the Rose Gardens, which was quickly becoming one of their favorite spots. They locked their bikes to the fence near the road and walked up through the garden.

"This is kind of like Balboa park," Veronica said. "But instead of being all in one place, it kind of snakes all the way through town."

"I like it better for that." Logan said. "It's more integrated; part of the city, instead of a separate entity. You can avoid Balboa. You can't go anywhere around here without running into lakes. I like it."

"I guess the Minnehaha creek is near here, too." Veronica said, as they sat on a bench near one of the fountains in the Rose Gardens. The fountain was copper, with a blue patina covering the water sprites and fauns decorating it. "I'm not really sure where, though."

Logan pulled out his phone and in a moment they were looking at a map of the area.

"It's about a half mile past that end of the lake," he said, nodding toward the South. "It looks like we could stay on this bike path all the way to the Minnehaha Falls...to the Mississippi...along the river road...How far do you want to go today? We could keep circling the city forever."

"I don't want to overdo my first day out. I could get pretty sore."

Logan's eyes dropped to her crotch as she spoke. "Are you sore?"

"Not yet but it's really not a place I want to blister."

"No...me neither. We could have some fun with ointment..."

"We don't need blisters for that kind of fun. Let's just work our way up to the ride to the Falls."

"You're the boss."

They walked hand in hand down the path toward the lake. When they reached the grove of trees outside the fence where they had locked their bikes, he pulled her into the shade, pushed her up against the bole of a tree and kissed her soundly.

"Wow!" she said when he had finished. "Tell me what that was for and I'll be sure to do it again!"

"I don't know." he looked around at the trees, the roses and the lake. "It just seemed like the appropriate response to the environment."

"Do gardens always have this affect on you?" she mused. "Why didn't I know that?"

A quarter mile further around the lake was a small, shady beach. Veronica pointed out the house she and Marla had looked at. Logan was far more interested in the water. It was a hot afternoon and they had been out for hours. He took off his shirt and shoes and threw himself into the lake. Veronica sat beneath a tree and watched him. He retrieved a Frisbee for a pair of little kids when it went out too deep for them. Soon, they had brought him into their game, trying to throw the plastic disc high over his head and forcing him to swim out deeper and deeper. Most of the time, they couldn't get it high enough over his head that he couldn't catch it with a leap and the leaps got splashier and more dramatic with each throw, causing the kids to shriek with laughter.

"Your husband?" a girl sitting on a blanket a few feet away asked Veronica. She looked about seventeen, with shoulder length blond hair, freckles beneath her tan and a small silver ring through her right nostril.

"We're just out for a bike ride," Veronica said, nodding. "But he just couldn't resist the water."

"Tell me about it." the other girl said. "It's gotten to the point where I don't let them leave the house without their suits on. But you know, it's summer. Why not throw yourself in the lake every chance you get? Hey! Cut it out!" the little boy, who looked to be about six, had tried to emulate Logan's flip and when his little sister laughed at his failure, he pushed her under water. The girl on the beach yelled at her charge but made no move toward the kids. Logan reached down and lifted the little girl out of the water and set her back on her feet.

"I knew he wouldn't let her drown," the girl said to Veronica, never taking her eyes off the kids. "He looks like a natural. Bet he worked as a life guard in high school, didn't he?"

"Yeah!" Veronica said, a multitude of memories flashing through her head. "He was a life saver all right!"

"Peter!" the girl yelled at the little boy who was now trying to knock Logan down in the water. "Stop trying to drown that nice man! I'm Fran, by the way."

"I'm Veronica. We're actually new in town so this is sort of an exploratory ride. Is the path that leads to the Minnehaha Falls near here?"

"Right there." Fran hooked a thumb over her shoulder. Veronica turned to look and sure enough, saw a wooded strip between two narrow streets with bikers, joggers and pedestrians coming and going. "That'll take you all the way to the river. That's how we came. I try to take them to a different beach every day. The farther we ride, the better they sleep at night. Are you going that way?"

"Not today. We came from Cedar Lake so I think this is it for today. I'm afraid of blisters."

"I bet you are." Fran chortled, ogling Logan as he came out of the water toward them. Veronica's mouth fell open and Fran burst out laughing. "I'm sorry!" she said. "I don't even know you. I shouldn't say things like that!" her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, "I have no class."

"Ah...okay." Veronica felt that old demon, jealousy, rear it's ugly head. Logan flopped down on his back next to her beneath the tree. She had an almost overwhelming urge to lick the rivulets of water running off his chest.

"Mind if I dry off a little before we go on?" he asked. Veronica shook her head and nonchalantly dropped a possessive hand onto his shoulder.

"Yeah; total life guard." Fran said, keeping her attention on the kids in the water. She threw a peek at Veronica "And you...you were a cheerleader. Right?"

"Ah...I actually got thrown off the pep squad for surliness." Veronica confessed with a vicious relish. "And for threatening my fellow squad members."

"Really? Awesome!" Fran laughed. "I got thrown off for being pregnant!"

"Are...Are they _yours?_" Veronica was astonished. She had assumed the girl was a nanny or older sister.

"Heck yeah! I wouldn't spend all my time staring at somebody else's brats."

"So, you had him in high school?" Veronica nodded toward the little boy. "That must have been tough."

"Oh, not him." Fran indicated the six year old busily trying to flip into the water. "I have an eleven year old. He didn't want to come with us today."

"YOU have an eleven year old?" Veronica was shocked. This girl whom she had originally taken for a teenager was closer to thirty.

"Yeah. Maybe he and your twelve year old husband could hang out." Fran chortled again.

Veronica felt an overwhelming sense of relief even as she felt foolish for the momentary rush of jealousy. _Women always look at Logan, _she reminded herself, _it doesn't mean anything. _She turned and poked Logan. "Logan, this is Fran. Those are her kids you've been tossing around in the water."

"Hey," Logan said, lifting himself up on his elbows and glancing at Fran then smiling toward the water. "Nice kids."

"Thanks." Fran said with a touch of pride. "I like 'em."

"Good!" Logan dropped flat in the grass and closed his eyes. Veronica and Fran exchanged a look. Veronica knew that 'good' was an odd rejoinder to a mom saying she liked her kids, but Fran just nodded, as though she understood.

* * *

Before they left the beach, Logan called JR and told him what they wanted for dinner. "Just pick it up, I'll cook it, whenever. Don't forget ice cream, she gets cranky without dessert." he closed his phone and looked over at Veronica who was filling their water bottles at a pump about fifty feet away.

"She didn't tell you what she does, did she?" he asked Fran.

"No, we pretty much just talked about kids." she answered without taking her eyes off the kids in the water. "Why? What does she do?"

"FBI." Logan grinned.

"No fuckin' way!" Fran's head swivelled around and she looked at Logan.

"Yep. License to kill and everything. She's kick ass."

"Is she packin' now?" Fran looked over at Veronica.

"Nah. It's her day off."

"But she's so cute! She's...Jill Munroe."

"No way," Logan said with authority. "Sabrina Duncan."

"The smart one?" she turned to look at him again.

"Really smart!" He attested, watching Veronica bring the newly filled water bottles to their bikes. Fran smiled at the way he watched his wife.

"How long you been married?" She asked, turning her eyes back to her kids.

"Couple of months."

"High school sweet hearts?"

"No." Logan laughed. "It took me a few years to get her away from my best friend."

Fran looked at him sharply, one eyebrow raised. "Still friends?"

"Nope."

"Friends come and go." Fran shrugged a shoulder and turned her eyes back to her children.

"Friends go." Logan answered. "She's all I ever wanted."

"That's awesome." Fran said. "And you'll have really cute kids."

"I'll bring 'em to the beach every day."

"Good."

to be continued...


	7. Chapter 7 Blythe Spite

Chapter7 Blythe Spite.

Sunday was rainy, so instead of exploring another bike route, Logan and Veronica took the Ferrari and went to several antique stores. It was a new experience for both of them, as Logan had never done it before and had no idea that beautiful old furniture could be had for a song if one were willing to look for it and Veronica had never done it with the ability to buy anything she fell in love with.

They both had a really good time, rooting through stuffed little shops, crammed with all sorts of buried treasure. Logan found the old comic books, Star Wars memorabilia and Hamm's Beer paraphernalia fascinating but had no interest in owning any of it. However, the hand carved and inlaid humidors were things he was very interested in owning. Veronica looked at the furniture. Logan noticed that she was also drawn to the old costume jewelry, some of which was quite fine. He bought her an antique garnet necklace and matching earrings when she wasn't looking. Her birthday was coming and she would never let him buy her what he considered 'real jewelry' because she just wasn't interested but he figured she couldn't object to such a gorgeous set for under $200.00. He also looked forward to seeing the blood red stones against her fair skin. He smiled, thinking of seeing her in nothing but the garnets.

They found a pair of unmatched but equally beautiful old walnut dressers in a shop not too far from the house. It seemed ridiculous that their t-shirts and underwear were stacked on the shelves of one of the enormous closets at home.

"We don't deliver," the woman who owned the shop said, apologetically. "You'll have to make those arrangements yourselves."

Logan called JR and told him what they had bought and where. He hung up, confident that JR would handle the rest.

"What I'd really like is a desk for that library," he said to Veronica. "It's the perfect place for an office, there's plenty of room for a desk and a couple of big comfy chairs for reading."

"Is that going to be your office or my office?" Veronica asked. "There will be times when I'll need a space at home to work, too."

"The room is huge. I don't mind sharing if you don't."

"There's not really room for two desks, though," she said. "Not if we want some arm chairs."

"Excuse me," the proprietress said. "It sound to me like what you want is a partner's desk."

She explained to them that a partner's desk was a large piece of furniture, popular in the 19th century among banking partners. It was double fronted desk so the partners worked facing each other. It didn't take up as much space as two full desks and most were really beautiful pieces of furniture.

"A friend of mine recently acquired a very nice example. Would you like me to call her and see if it's still available? Her shop is just south of Lake Harriet."

Veronica was about to decline, as they had already spent quite a bit but Logan eagerly nodded his head and when the woman went to use her phone, he turned to Veronica and said "We can play footsie while we work."

"That sounds productive." Veronica snorted.

"Depends entirely on what we're trying to produce." Logan said, quirking up an eyebrow. When the woman returned with the information that the desk was still available, she gave them the name and address of her friend's shop and they left her with a charge on Logan's black Amex and the info that someone would be in to pick up the dressers, later.

They drove back down Excelsior Avenue to Lake Calhoun. Everything looked completely different in the wet gray weather than it had under sunny blue skies. It was all still beautiful but now the lake had an atmospheric, romantic look. There were still a few bikers, runners and pedestrians out in the rain. On the south side of the lake, near a large, deserted beach, they turned onto the street they were directed to and two miles up, found themselves at an intersection with several antique shops on both sides of the street. A lamp store, a frame shop and a Dunn Bros. coffee shop made for a bustling little commercial intersection in the middle of a lovely residential neighborhood.

"This is the neighborhood where Marla showed me all the cute houses." Veronica pointed out. "I feel like we kind of stand out, driving around in a Ferrari."

"Really?" Logan parked the car and nodded across the street. Veronica turned and saw a bright red Ferrari, the same model they were driving, parked in front of the coffee shop. "I think we blend."

They went into the shop and the lady in charge was expecting them. She showed them a spectacular old hand carved mahogany desk with an inlaid leather top, intricate detailing between the drawers and hammered brass ring tab drawer pulls. The saleslady was showing them the craftsmanship of the dove tailing in the drawers when Logan looked at Veronica and saw that her mouth was practically watering.

"This work?" Logan asked her.

"Yeah." She breathed, running a hand across the leather top.

"We'll take it." He told the woman. Then he called JR and told him to add another stop to his pick up route. Then they went home and spent the afternoon watching the rain on Cedar Lake from the comfort of their glass walled living room. They played scrabble with all the windows open, breathing in the delicious scent of Cedar Lake in the rain. Veronica won.

* * *

By late afternoon, JR was back, with two guys and a truck, who moved the furniture into the house and put it where Veronica directed.

"We need chairs." Logan said, looking at their beautiful new desk. "Doesn't really work for me without a chair."

"What do you like?" JR said. "I can go pick up some desk chairs." They went on line and found something that Logan and Veronica each liked; wooden swivel chairs with casters, upholstered in leather, that looked old but were new and ergonomically designed.

"How is he going to pay for them?" Veronica asked Logan as JR turned to go.

"I gave him a card to use." Logan said.

"How do you know he won't…" her voice died as both Logan and JR looked at her in surprise. When she realized she had just asked Logan how he knew Jeff wasn't a thief, she couldn't help it; she started to giggle.

Without taking his stunned gaze off Veronica, JR leaned toward Logan and murmured "Do I have to take that?"

"Yes." Logan replied. "You do. Now go."

JR never took his eyes off Veronica as he went out the door.

"I'm sorry, Jeff!" she laughed as he went. "It's a reflex! I didn't mean it."

Logan looked at her with a smile. "I love you, Sugarpuss but you're the most suspicious girl I've ever known."

"I really am sorry!" she wiped her eyes. "I _know _you can trust him!"

"Rule number 17 for the super rich; never insult the help to their face. To their grand kids faces, yes; but only if it's Weevil."

"Oh, come on. There's just something about Jeff that makes it impossible for me to resist needling him."

"I know. He's like the brother you never had. I feel the same thing with What's-her-face."

"Oh, listen to you; all human-nature-psychology-bullshit. You'd think _you_ were the one with the psych degree."

"Well, I must have picked up something listening to you two bore on and on about it in your undergrad days. I still say all you need to know about human nature can be learned by reading the complete works of Shakespeare." Veronica had long ago stopped being surprised by Logan's rare references to being well read. He read _everything _and had once said that he'd rather read the worst novel ever written than watch the best movie ever made, the works of the Coen Brothers excepted, but she had a feeling he'd been quoting someone.

"How is Trina, anyway?" She asked. "_Where_ is she?" Trina had sent them a pretty silver picture frame as a wedding gift but had not been back to Neptune before they had left. She and Logan had never been particularly close, what with the six year age difference and Trina had not really forgiven Logan for testifying against Aaron at his murder trial. Logan didn't seem to care much and as for Veronica, she had a hard time forgiving Trina for discounting the horror stories Logan had tried to tell her all those years before. Cigarette burns and broken noses, indeed.

"Don't know, don't care." Was all the answer Logan had for Veronica's question. "Now that he's gone," He lifted her off the floor and sat her on the desk. "...there's something I've always wanted to do on a desk top…"

* * *

Monday dawned hot and sunny once again but Veronica had to go to work. They rose early and Logan went down and made coffee while Veronica showered and dressed. They ate breakfast and read the papers on the terrace out back.

"Well, I'd best get going if I'm not going to be late," she said, standing. "What are your plans for today?"

"To start with; Halo. Later on, I'll check out the conditions on the lake. If there's no wind, I believe I'll look into your suggestion regarding a gun permit. If there is a wind; I may not be back till dark."

"You shouldn't have any trouble with the permit; you have no felony convictions."

"Well, no; if I'd been convicted of any of the things I was charged with, we wouldn't be here."

"Try not to get into any trouble while I'm gone. And think about furniture; we need to get some beds for those other rooms. I think Dad's going to come see us for Labor day."

"That would be great! Jeez, that means we've only got…five weeks to pick out a bed."

"I'd like a couch in the living room, some end tables, a lamp or two…"

"Plenty of time for all that. Get going or you'll be late." He stood up and kissed her. She headed for the garage. "Have fun at work, Honey!" he called after her. "I'll have pot roast and baked potatoes for you when you get home!"

"Don't worry your pretty little head about me," she threw over her shoulder. "Just make sure you get yourself all gussied up for me when I get home!"

"I'll get my nails done!"

* * *

At the office, it was more stacks of dossiers needing background checks.

"Hey, Mars; wanna make this interesting?" Agent Tuski asked from her desk a few feet away.

"Is that even possible?" Veronica sighed.

"Let's see who can get the most done by lunch time."

"What are the stakes?"

"How about…loser buys lunch?"

"What's the standard? Number of calls completed? Number of files? Some take a lot longer than others."

"Both. One point per call, ten points on a closed file."

"You're on!" Veronica pulled open the top file and began dialing. Experience gave her the edge over Tuski but she realized quickly that she had pulled a difficult case. After an hour, she realized she needed an edge. She picked up her phone and made an inter office call.

Agent Jeremy Sheppard picked up his phone in an office upstairs. "Hey, Mars!" he said. "Finally come to your senses about that old man of yours? Ready to step with Shep? "

"Oh, my God, does that _ever work?"_ she asked. Shep was a young, single agent with a few years experience with the bureau. Veronica had met him two years ago during one of her training summers. He was smart, funny and extremely attractive with a head full of black curls and a charming smile featuring dimples you could hide quarters in. He was also an incorrigible flirt.

"Whether or not it works depends on what you think my objective is, Mars!" he laughed. "What's your objective on this fine Monday morning?"

"I just need you to come down here and distract Tuski for, oh…about fifteen minutes?"

"Ordinarily, I'd tell you to quit trying to waste valuable bureau man hours, Mars. But since distracting Tuski _is _one of my very favorite things to do…I'll be right down. But you'll owe me."

"Who owes who when this is over will depend on how well you distract her, don't you think?"

"Nope. You need a favor, I grant said favor. Anything more I accomplish is mine alone."

"Whatever. If you're not here in the next half hour, the deal's off." Veronica hung up, confident that her strategy would work. Shep really liked Tuski.

Sure enough, less than ten minutes later, the tall, powerfully built agent came strolling through the large office filled with desks at which rookies toiled, stopped at Agent Stephanie Tuski's desk and lean comfortably against it.

"Hey, Tuski. Get any sunshine this weekend, Sunshine?"

Veronica winced at his opening, then tuned him out and concentrated on her work, sure that Tuski wouldn't be back on task until something happened to drive Shep off and that would have to be something big. Tuski really liked Shep.

Unfortunately, something big marched by after only a few minutes in the person of Agent Connie Blythe. Agent Blythe was the administrator in charge of the bullpen in the St. Paul office. She was a very capable organizer who lacked any kind of people skills whatsoever. She seemed to have no sense of humor or perspective and no imagination. She was a natural bureaucrat, having risen to the level of her competence.

"Sheppard, what are you doing down here?" Blythe barked, halting in front of Tuski's desk. "If you haven't got any work to do, I'll have a chat with your supervisor to remedy that. In the mean time, stop wasting my agent's time."

"Why, ma'am," Shep said, straightening up and smiling. "A talk with such a charming agent as Miss Tuski here, could never be a waste of time. I'm on a…fact finding mission."

"Here's a fact for you; I catch you down here again making goo goo eyes at one of my agents, I'll haul your ass up on sexual harassment charges."

"If she'd said she'd haul your 'sweet ass' up on charges, this could go either way." Veronica murmured.

"I BEG YOUR PARDON?" Blythe rounded on Veronica.

"Hmmm?" Veronica said, looking innocent.

"WHAT DID YOU SAY?" Blythe demanded.

"Did I say something?" Veronica asked, confused. Over Blythe's shoulder, Shep shot Veronica a grin, and strolled off down the office.

"You certainly did." Blythe said. "And it sounded particularly insubordinate to me."

"I'm sorry, Ma'am. I frequently talk to myself while doing these checks to keep focused. Words of encouragement, mostly. To keep myself, you know; awake."

"Agent Mars," Blythe folded her arms and glared at Veronica. "Background checks may not be the most glamorous job here at the bureau but let me assure you; they are vital. Once you've had a few years of experience in this agency, you'll realize that glamour and excitement don't get the job done. It's research and legwork and if you aren't willing to put in the hours, perhaps you are in the wrong place."

"I know what investigation entails, ma'am." Veronica said, evenly.

"I've read your file, Mars. Small time PI work is not the same. This is the big leagues. Everyone here impressed their college professors; you're nothing special."

"But I'm a Special _agent, _ma'am." Veronica said, giving her best pep squad smile.

"Being cute may have gotten you fast tracked in, Mars." Blythe snarled. "But it won't get you out of the bullpen." Then she whirled on her heel and stalked off.

"Jesus, Mars!" Tuski said, "don't you have the brains to just say 'Yes Ma'am' and shut up? Now that battle axe has got you in her cross hairs!"

"Ugh." Veronica sneered. "The only thing I learned in high school is to stand up to bullies and jerks. She's not dangerous; she's just annoying."

"I'll say. She's always trying to wreck my fun. Do you think I should go out with Shep?"

"Do you want to?"

"He's pretty hot."

"If things go wrong…" Veronica grimaced.

"I know…every single gal's dilemma; now that I'm working all the time, how do I meet men? And if I can't date the guys I work with, who do I date? You're lucky; you don't have that problem."

"Well, it's better to be lucky than good but I am BOTH. It's noon and I believe you owe me lunch!"

"Let's go find Shep. Maybe he'll spring for both of us."

"Okay but if you wind up dating him, you owe me double."

"What?"

* * *

Down in the cafeteria, the two young agents filled their trays. Shep was nowhere in sight, so Tuski was paying for both lunches, swearing that she'd win the afternoon.

"Then you'll have to pay for my drinks after work on Friday."

"Really? I don't remember making that bet." Veronica said.

"Chicken?" Tuski challenged.

"No thanks, I'll have the veal." Veronica pointed at some gray mystery meat in the case.

"That's pork," Tuski said, wrinkling her nose. "I _think _that's pork."

"Let's get some for Blythe. It's been _years _since I've seen a woman that desperate for some pork_."_

"Veronica!" Tuski burst out laughing but stopped abruptly when she turned toward the tables. "Crap. She's here."

"And…" Veronica surveyed the room "The only open seats are the table right next to hers."

"Come on, then." Tuski bravely marched toward the open seats.

"Doesn't high school _ever _end?" Veronica muttered, following Tuski. The cafeteria was set up with tables of two, four and eight seats, ostensibly so that partners or teams could discuss cases while they ate. Blythe was at a table for eight but while the others at the table talked shop or otherwise, Blythe was reading a report, ignoring her lunch companions. Tuski and Veronica sat at the next table, which was an empty two seater.

"Oh, come on!" Tuski laughed as she set down her tray and sat. "Cute little thing like you? I'll bet high school was your _bitch,_ wasn't it?"

"God, no." Veronica grimaced. "High school was a nightmare."

"Right. Which was it? Head cheerleader or Prom Queen?"

At this, Agent Blythe stood and turned to the two younger agents.

"She was no Prom Queen." She said to Agent Tuski. "Hasn't she told you? She's the girl who solved the Lilly Kane murder. She accused Aaron Echolls, that's right; _Aaron Echolls_, the movie star, of bashing in that poor girl's head. He _allegedly_ had an affair with a minor girl and was foolish enough to video tape them in bed. The alleged tapes somehow…disappeared…before the trial."

She looked at Veronica with a malicious little smile on her face. "Background checks must seem like such a waste of time for a crack sleuth like yourself, I suppose. But you're going to have to learn to give better testimony." She turned back to Tuski, who sat looking stunned. "She was the star witness at the trial. Aaron's version of events was that she and her little friend both wanted to be his lovers. She was fairly easy to discredit; allegedly, she'd had affairs with no less than _three_ material witnesses…and had the prescriptions to prove it. I guess the jury found Aaron's story more believable; he was acquitted on all charges."

"He _was _an Oscar winning actor." Veronica said through clenched teeth. Blythe turned toward her with a look that dripped venom.

"That poor man blew his brains out a week later. You ruined his life!" she snarled.

"Allegedly." Veronica said. Blythe shook her head in disgust and stalked off. Veronica stared down at her plate, concentrating on breathing slowly while her rage subsided.

"Is that true?" Tuski finally asked. Veronica looked up at her and chuffed a short laugh.

"It's all public record." She sighed.

"Did Aaron Echolls kill Lilly Kane?"

"Aaron Echolls was a monster who liked to videotape himself cheating on his wife, beat his son on a regular basis, slept with at least one minor and murdered my best friend. The day he got off was the day I lost faith in the criminal justice system."

"Oh."

"The day I found out he was dead restored my faith in _ultimate_ justice."

"So…" Tuski said "basically, high school didn't just suck for you; it _really sucked."_

Veronica burst out laughing at that. "Do we have to wait till Friday to get those drinks?" she asked. "Do we have to wait until after work?"

* * *

The monotony of their afternoon was broken by Veronica and Tuski being summoned to a meeting regarding a new stack of dossiers. They went into the conference room and sat with a handful of other rookies from the bullpen and waited for Section Chief Larson.

Veronica was chatting with Tuski and a few other agents about their weekends when Blythe walked through the door. "I can't believe how tired I am," Veronica was saying "We spent the entire weekend-"

"We all know what you spent the weekend doing, Mars." Blythe interrupted, sneering. "Newlyweds. For Christ's sake, get over it. You were supposed to take a honeymoon to get it out of your system."

"Get it out of my system?" Veronica whirled around and faced the senior agent. "Is _that _what the honeymoon was for? To get _sex _out of my system? Huh. That actually explains a lot. Like, why so many of your generation are divorced. Were you so busy asserting your feminist identity that you couldn't be bothered to take pleasure in your husband? Well, no thank you."

Blythe actually looked like her eyes were about to pop right out of her purple face. Veronica heard one of the younger agents smother a snicker. She held Blythe's eye until the older woman marched off and took a seat at the far end of the conference table.

"You're not the only one who can access a file." Veronica muttered, watching the woman go.

"Shit. I've never seen Captain Blythe rendered speechless." Agent Ted Morris said, looking at Veronica with respect. "Remind me never to piss you off!"

"We were _biking."_ Veronica said. "We spent the entire weekend _biking."_

"Is _that_ what they're calling it these days?" Tuski snorted, lasciviously. "You enjoy making enemies, don't you?"

"No." Veronica shook her head, sadly. "I _desperately _seek the approval of everyone I meet!" She sat as the Section Chief entered and the meeting began.

"Well, you're not very good at it." Morris said.

* * *

"Hey, babe. Do you mind if we push dinner back till a little later?" Veronica asked Logan on the phone shortly after 5:00. "I'm going out for drinks."

"Veronica!" Logan gasped, dramatically. "Are you making new friends?"

"Maybe." she smiled.

"Do you want me to join you?" He asked with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

"Not this time. We're going to talk shop and I think we'll be done by the time you got across town. Besides, nobody gets to meet you until I've deemed them worthy. Don't worry; I won't subject you to anyone dull, I promise."

"Is there such a thing as a dull FBI agent?"

"Like you wouldn't believe." she sighed. "But some of them are promising."

"I got some chops for the grill. They won't take long, so whenever you get home..."

"I love you."

"You're _really _gonna love me when you see these chops."

"I'd really love you if we had corn flakes for dinner."

"Hey, when it's your turn to cook..."

"I won't be late." She smiled and ended the call. She hadn't wanted to tell Logan that the reason she was meeting Tuski for drinks was to clarify the Aaron Echolls case. There was no way she would subject Logan to _that. _She had no intention of telling Tuski who her husband really was, either. She knew that if she didn't explain it to Tuski herself, the curious agent was likely to look up the case on her own and it would be a moment's work for her to put two and two together and blow Logan's cover.

She grabbed her bag and she and Tuski headed out of the building, only to be joined by Shep in the main lobby.

"I've been told I need to buy you two drinks." he said, looking at Tuski. "I'm not clear on the why, but no one ever said I could turn down drinks with two such-"

"Stuff it, Shep." Veronica had no patience for his schtick. "You can come but no flirting, no flattery, no over the top, ridiculous _anything."_

_"_Really?" he asked, looking at Tuski for support.

"Really." Tuski said. "V's gonna tell me all about her high school experience. You can save the rest for later."

"Ohh." Shep had known about Veronica since she had first shown up at the bureau as an intern. He was as curious as anyone to hear the tale first hand. "I can abide by those ground rules."

"Where are we going?" Veronica asked.

"O'Gara's." Shep said. "This way."

In ten minutes they were in a dark leather booth in an Irish pub less than two blocks away. Shep had a Guinness, Tuski a Stella Artois and Veronica a diet coke.

"You don't drink, Mars?" Shep asked.

"I'm drinking!" Veronica hoisted her soda. "This is a harrowing tale I'm about to recount. You don't want me telling it without a clear head."

"She weighs four pounds," Tuski said. "One Stella and we'd have to call her a cab."

"Do you want to hear this or not?" Veronica asked. Both agents nodded and looked at her, expectantly. "This is it; the true story of what happened to my best friend, Lilly Kane. The morning she died, she told me she had a secret but she never had a chance to tell me what it was. She had broken up with her long term boyfriend about a week earlier. Her brother Duncan, who had broken up with _me _about a month earlier, found her body by the pool in the backyard that evening. Her parents claimed that they had come home with Duncan and that Lilly had been dead for hours when they all arrived. My Dad was the Sheriff and he could tell that something about their story didn't fit. He accused Jake Kane of a cover up. A few weeks later, the Sheriff's video of Lilly's body at the crime scene was leaked to the Internet. Public outrage drove my Dad out of office. A man named Abel Koontz confessed to killing Lilly. The case was closed but Dad and I both knew that it just didn't add up. Evidence kept coming forward that made Abel Koontz less an less likely..."

"What evidence?"Shep broke in. "With a confessed killer, how did you know?"

"Abel Koontz was in possession of a pair of Lilly's shoes. White sneakers, hand decorated with a fabric marker. They were found on his houseboat. But the same pair of shoes turned up in crime scene photos of her bedroom. I recognised them because I'm the one who decorated them."

"So the chances of anyone else on Earth realizing they were the same shoes was practically..."

"Zero." Veronica nodded. "So my Dad and I kept digging. Dad spent two years tracking down leads but he found a hooker who had a standing date with Mr. Koontz and who admitted that he'd actually been in Vegas with her the day Lilly was killed. Dad was absolutely sure that the Kane's themselves had something to do with it. A year after the murder, I discovered a traffic ticket photo that proved Lilly was alive two hours _after_ the official time of death. My Dad was right; the Kane's had tampered with the crime scene to make it appear that Lilly had died hours earlier. They thought _Duncan_ had accidentally killed her during an epileptic fit. But in trying to protect Duncan, they inadvertently covered up for the real murderer. Then, the ex boyfriend's alibi fell apart when it became apparent that he had come home from Mexico that morning..."

"Wait, wait! I remember this part." Tuski said. "Wasn't the boyfriend Aaron Echolls son?"

"Yes." Veronica didn't elaborate. "He had come back from Mexico earlier than he'd originally admitted but he told me he wrote Lilly a note that would exonerate him. No such note had been found among Lilly's things but I knew where she might have hidden it where it wouldn't have been found. I was looking for that note when I found video tapes of Lilly in bed with Aaron."

"His own son's girl friend?" Shep sounded disgusted.

"Yes. There were tapes from at least three different occasions. Lilly and Aaron had an affair, he taped them in bed together, she found the tapes and took them. Aaron came to get them back; you can imagine what it would've done to his career if they were made public. She wouldn't give them up; he killed her in a fit of rage."

"How do you _know_ that's what happened?" Tuski asked. "Isn't it possible that the son killed her out of jealousy, then framed his dad for spite?"

"A lot of people thought that. A lot of people probably still do. I had _seen_ Aaron Echolls do terrible things to people. You have to remember; my best friend dated his son for two years. I saw Aaron beat his daughter's boyfriend to a pulp with my own eyes. He was a violent, terrible man."

"Wait." Shep said. "Wasn't the Echolls kid arrested for suspicion of murder at the same time?"

"Yep. Different case." Veronica said. "He got caught in the crossfire of rival gangs and since he'd been beaten unconscious, was a handy patsy to pin a corpse on. He was completely exonerated."

"There was something else about that kid, too, but I can't think what it was..." Shep mumbled.

"Whatever happened to the video tapes?" Tuski pressed. "The defense implied that they never existed."

"One of the deputies stole them to sell. Unfortunately, the same deputy and I had dated for a while, months earlier. The defense used the fact that I had dated Duncan Kane and this deputy to make it sound as though I were manipulating everyone with my womanly wiles. None of it happened that way. Lilly's boyfriend discovered that the tapes had been stolen and he bought them himself-"

"Did he destroy them to help his Dad?" Tuski asked.

"The same kid you suspect might have framed his Dad? No. He hated Aaron. He watched the tapes and testified himself as to what was on them. He destroyed them to be sure they would never turn up on line like the crime scene tapes. He was ready to go to jail rather than let that happen, again. He still loved her. And let me reiterate; he _hates _his father. The prosecution made a deal and he was never charged."

"But without the actual tapes, the case fell apart?"

"I don't know if the tapes would have made a difference, honestly." Veronica sighed. "The defense would have simply said that Lilly had consented, had blackmailed him, they would have been able to spin it another way. I don't know if any jury would've been proof against Aaron's performance. I just don't know. But the kicker is this; shortly after Aaron's acquittal, I found myself in an elevator with him and he actually said to me that bashing in Lilly's head had been the only way to shut her up. He told me, knowing that double jeapardy made it impossible for me to do anything about it."

"Fuuuck." Shep said.

"And he blew his brains out a week later?" Tuski said. "Why? He got away with murder!"

"I don't know." Veronica said. "But it may be the only decent thing he ever did."

"What about..." Tuski stopped abruptly, looking uncomfortable. "Uh...Captain Blythe said something about 'prescriptions'?"

"That actually had nothing to do with this case," Veronica said, wearily. "Two years earlier, I was rufied and raped at a party. I found out I had chlamydia midway through my senior year. The defense got hold of that info and used it to make me look like a slut. It all fit into their 'manipulation via vagina' narrative."

"Fuuuck." Shep repeated. "I thought high school sucked when I didn't make varsity basketball as a sophomore. Fuuck."

"I only told you this because I know the rumors will be flying and the story gets more sensational with each telling. I thought you should know the truth."

"We can set the record straight if anyone spouts off." Tuski said. "We got it from the horse's mouth."

" I feel more like the horse's ass." Veronica shrugged.

"Blythe is gonna spread all that smack about you." Tuski warned. "She does NOT like you."

"I thought she just hated men, " Shep said. "I guess she hates everybody."

"Well, she certainly hates Mars." Tuski told Shep what had happened in the cafeteria and then in the meeting that afternoon.

"Good work, Mars!" he nodded his approval. "You've got witnesses; if she starts talking about you and the Echolls' case, everyone will chalk it up to vindictiveness."

"Yeah, it's not so often that my temper and tongue work out to my advantage like this." Veronica said, dryly. "And now, I've gotta go. My little man has some chops he's grilling up for me."

"When do we get to meet this husband who cooks?" Tuski asked.

"I don't know." Veronica said with a smile. "He's shy."

to be continued...


	8. Chapter 8 Life in the Slow Lane

Chapter 8 Life in The Slow Lane

After Veronica went off to work, Logan buzzed JR, who arrived in the kitchen within the minute.

"You raaaang?" he asked, in a deep rumbling voice.

"I'm going to run down to the main beach at Calhoun," Logan said. "I need you to meet me there with the sail board stuff. It's all in the garage."

"I know where it is."

"I'll probably surf till lunch time. I'll call you when I'm done."

"Unnnggh." JR groaned as though his stomach hurt.

"What the hell?"

"It's Lurch. I'm doing Lurch."

"Oh." Logan's eyebrows flew up in recognition. "Yeah. Good job."

"HomeSports are coming to install the sparring ring in this week—"

"Handle it; that's what you're here for."

"Very good, Sir!" JR pulled an upper crust British accent out of his ass.

"What?" Logan spread his hands in frustrated confusion.

"Jeeves."

"Are you gonna pick a butler and stick with it or does this amusement never end?"

"I don't know. How many butlers are there?"

"Well, there's Lurch, Jeeves, Albert, Benson…" Logan looked at JR. "I don't think I could tell Benson from you."

"Yeah, he's the most fun. Albert's the hardest; too many to pick from. My personal favorite is Michael Caine, of course."

"Your Lurch is pretty good but your Jeeves sucks."

"So sorry, Sir. I shall strive to do better."

"The accent is fine; you're just not smart enough to be Jeeves."

"Fuck off."

"Good Benson, though."

"That was me; Benson never used the 'F' word."

"It was always implied."

"Ungh hungh." JR _did _pull those two syllables out exactly like Robert Guillaume.

* * *

Logan left the house running and JR loaded the board, wetsuit, sails and anything else he thought Logan might need into the back of the Range Rover and drove down to the main beach. It wasn't even a full mile from the house so he was a little bit surprised when Logan didn't meet him in the parking lot. A few minutes later, he arrived from the North.

"Where've you been?" JR asked.

"I detoured over to Isles and came under the bridge. It's quieter." Logan said, tipping back a water bottle and drinking deeply. "What time is it?"

They made plans to meet at noon, then hit the Tin Fish for lunch. Logan left the wetsuit in the SUV, as the lake water was warm. The suit would come in handy if Logan turned out to be one of the intrepid wind surfers who took to the waves until the lake froze but until late September or even October, there was little need for a wetsuit.

It was hot and very windy; perfect conditions for wind surfing.

While Logan surfed, JR took the Range Rover and did some grocery shopping and researched a few other things Logan had asked him to look into; lightweight canoes and trailers and what steps were necessary to get Logan a carry permit.

At noon, JR pulled the Range Rover back into the parking lot at Main Beach. Considering it was a Monday morning, there were a few more people on the beach than JR would have expected but it was easy to pick Logan out of a small group of guys standing near their sailboards, taking a break from the waves. The water was still dotted with wind surfers, weaving their way in and out of the class of kids learning to sail in little square park board sailboats. The dock was a quarter turn around the lake so the surfers didn't really get in the way of the novice sailors. It was hot, sunny and looked like a party was going on. This was Monday on Lake Calhoun.

"God damn." JR breathed. "Have I heard nothing but lies about the Midwest?"

He got out of the car and walked to the edge of the sand and waited. He watched his employer. Logan seemed relaxed and enjoying himself. Over the years JR had learned to read Logan's body language; it wasn't that difficult. He could tell at a glance if Logan were tense or not, if he were trapped or annoyed. Today, JR saw nothing but a young man at ease, talking with some chance met surfing aficionados on the beach. After a minute or two, Logan caught sight of him, said goodbye to his fellow wind surfers, picked up his board and came toward the parking lot. JR walked down to meet him, took the board and Logan went back for the sail and boom.

"So, making friends and influencing people?" JR asked as they put the board up on the rack.

"I am neither moving nor shaking." Logan said, intent on the clamps. "I'm just hanging with the rest of the slackers, enjoying their unemployment. Life in the slow lane suits me fine."

When they finished fixing the board to the roof carrier, Logan pulled a tee-shirt and a pair of flip flops out of the back seat. He dressed and started walking the half mile to the fish grill near the dock. JR finished what he was doing, locked the car and trotted after him.

"You ordered lunch?" Logan asked as JR caught up to him.

"Yep. The sailing class ends at noon and the wait is like, an hour if they get there ahead of us. As it is, they may have called ours up, but I doubt it. There was already a line when I got there."

"What are we having?"

"The fish sandwich looks good. I ordered walleye. Don't worry; no shell fish. Also, a side of rings and some drinks."

"Do they serve beer?"

"They do." JR grinned. "Come on, Admiral; I know what you like." Five years of bringing Logan his meals and JR had a very good idea of which beer Logan liked at lunch, which when he was hot and what he liked when he was just plain thirsty. They approached the pavilion and sure enough, the line at the order window was already several dozen deep. The tables overlooking the lake were filling up fast with kids and moms and folks lucky enough to get outside for lunch.

"I'll get us a table." JR said. He strolled up to a table overlooking the water, where a handful of adolescent boys were contemplating their combined worth to see if they could afford any lunch.

"Hey, guys." JR said, as the kids looked up. "I really need this table, you really need some food. Will this work for you?" He held out a fifty.

"Heck yeah!" said the spokesman of the group, a dark eyed, dark haired kid of ten or eleven, grabbing the bill from JR. "The table's yours, mister!"

"But this is the best table here," a skinny, freckled kid complained.

"What good's the table with no food on it?" the first kid demanded of his buddy. "Move. Your. Butt."

"Nice doing business with you." JR said, nodding to the leader who grinned at him.

"Anytime! You want me to save this one for you tomorrow?" the kid asked.

"I don't know if we'll be here tomorrow but if we are, I'll look for you." JR assured him.

"Ask for Fin," the kid said, waving a hand around the whole dock area. "Everybody knows me."

"Finn? As in Huck Finn?"

"Who? No. It's Irish; Finbar."

"You're Irish?" JR asked. "You look Samoan. I've never seen a tan Irishman before."

"I'm black Irish." Fin grinned.

"Yes," said a female voice behind JR. "Descended from the Selkies."

JR turned and found himself face to face with a very pretty, dark eyed girl who was obviously Fin's older sister.

"Hey, Bryn! Dude bought us lunch! Anything you want; we're loaded." Fin said.

"Thanks for lunch, dude." Bryn smiled at JR, who stood staring at her, dumbstruck. She turned and followed her brother and his friends over to the long line at the order window. When he finally turned back to the table, Logan was seated, feet up on the chair opposite, watching him.

"Dude, you seriously suck with women." Logan said, shaking his head. "No opener, no follow up…in fact, I don't think I heard you so much as grunt in her direction. Pathetic."

"Did you see her?" JR asked, looking back over toward the line. "Wow."

"What are you, twelve? Go talk to her."

"What? I'm not gonna talk to her."

"Why not?"

"What am I gonna say? I don't know her."

"You didn't have a problem getting exactly what you wanted from her brother. Just go up and say something nice. You can do that, right? Wait." Logan frowned. "Have I ever actually _heard_ you say anything nice?"

"I can say nice things." JR retorted. "I just don't waste them on rich, spoiled brats."

Logan's eyebrows went up and he said "Apparently not…" just as the waitress came through the crowd, calling "JR? Order up for JR!"

"That's us." JR said, hopping up from his seat and waving the waitress over. Logan made no move toward getting the food but sat with his feet up, looking out at the lake while she set baskets of food on the table for them.

"Enjoy your lunch!" she said and was gone into the crowd. JR sat heavily and snapped open a paper napkin, which he slapped onto his lap.

"Quit pouting." Logan said, grabbing his beer and drinking. "She might be looking."

"You know, not everyone has the confidence that being born worth millions brings." JR grumped.

"Dude, it's not the money." Logan said.

"Of course it's the money!"

"No, it's not. I could have any girl here in the back of my car in twenty minutes and not one has any idea that I have two bucks to my name."

"No, no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm not even saying that they liked you because they knew you were rich, although they all _did_ know…I'm saying the fact that _you know _is what makes you so sure you could do that." JR shook his head. "I don't expect you to get it. You're like a gorgeous girl; they don't know what it's like to be ugly so they can never understand how easy being gorgeous makes their lives."

"If you think being gorgeous guarantees an easy life then you're a fool."

"Come on. You know what I mean."

"No. I really don't." Logan's voice was hard. "The two most gorgeous girls I ever knew barely survived high school. In fact, one didn't. So quit talking out of your ass."

They ate in silence for a while. Then JR said "All I know is that I've never been gorgeous or rich. I've had to work my ass off for everything I've got."

"Be grateful all you ever had to earn was money. As for mine; _I earned every cent_." Logan took another pull off his beer. "And picking a fight with me isn't going to get you that girl's number."

"Shit, Moneybags." JR said, dejectedly. "Why would a girl like that even look at a schmuck like me?"

"'Cause you're the guy talking to her? Go get her number or you're fired."

"You're not gonna fire me for that."

"Go get her number or I'll lose all respect for you?"

"You have no respect for anyone."

"Go get her number!"

"You go get it!"

"If we were in sixth grade, I would!"

"If we were in sixth grade, you wouldn't be eating lunch with me. More likely you'd have stolen my lunch money and stuck my head in the toilet."

"I may stick your head in the toilet today! Actually, if we were in sixth grade, I'd have my hand up that girl's shirt by now. And what conceivable use would I have had for your buck seventy five?"

"What, _that's _the part that bothers you? Not the swirly?"

"What, you're more concerned with whether or not I'd have flushed your head than me getting it on with your girl in the janitor's closet? 'Cause I _would_ have."

"_I know_. You had more confidence with girls at twelve than I do now. That's my entire point."

"Some things are worth fighting for, JR. Even if the only thing you have to fight is your own fucking ego. If you go over there and ask her for her name and number what's the worst thing that could happen?"

"She could laugh at me, tell me I'm nuts. Point out how totally out of my league she is."

They sat there for a few moments, lost in their own thoughts as the afternoon sparkled around them.

"Senior year of high school," Logan finally said, "I threw a replacement party after our Prom was cancelled."

"I remember. Alterna-Prom. I didn't work that night but I heard all about it."

"You didn't hear this; the only reason I threw that party was so I could talk to a girl I was crazy about. I knew that as soon as we graduated she would leave town and I'd never see her again and I couldn't stand thinking that she'd go and I'd miss my chance. So I took it. I got drunk and I poured my heart out to her."

"So…what happened?" JR knew for a fact that Kendall Casablancas had spent the night of the Alterna-Prom with Logan; he had served them breakfast.

"She ran. She didn't want to hear it. She looked…_completely_ horrified… and she took off like the Road Runner."

"Ouch." JR sat back in his seat.

"It gets worse." Logan said, ruefully. "The next morning, she knocked on my door to apologize. I was hung over and sick and could barely remember the night before…all I knew was that I had fucked up royally; while she was at the door, trying to tell me she felt the same way, my consolation prize came slithering out of the bedroom and chased her away again. When she got on that elevator, she threw me one last look of pure _loathing."_

"Fuuuuuck! "

"Yeah," Logan chuckled. "It was a bad couple of weeks."

"Damn, Moneybags," JR said, remembering another bad couple of weeks Logan had suffered. "If a girl can reduce _you_ to a quivering mess, what chance does a guy like me have?"

"You say that like being reduced to a quivering mess is a bad thing."

"Did you ever see that girl again?"

"It was Veronica, you dumbass."

"WHAT."

"She's the only one who's ever done that to me...the only one who ever could...and it all worked out fine. Now, I seriously doubt that cute girl over there with her little brother and all his pals is as heartless a bitch as Veronica."

"She's not heartless and you shouldn't talk that way."

"She knows it's a term of affection. I call her a heartless bitch, she calls me fucknut...it's sweet, really."

"You two are seriously twisted."

"Ah, well..." Logan smiled. "As long as we're twisted around each other, it's all good." He finished his sandwich and looked at JR. "No guts, no glory, dude. And definitely no girl."

"If…" JR sighed. "What…what would _you_ say to her?"

"Me?" Logan looked over at Bryn and the boys, who were almost to the head of the ordering line. "I'd offer to hold the table for her."

JR stared at Logan for a long moment. Then he hopped up and strode toward the order window.

"Whaaaat a whiner." Logan said, finishing his beer.

* * *

"You talked to her for a minute and a half," Logan complained as they walked in the back door. "And you've managed to talk _about_ her all the way home. What part of 'I'm bored now, shut up or you're fired' don't you understand?"

"You aren't gonna need me for anything around noon tomorrow, are you? She picks up her brother after sailing class every day. I figured I could just…"

"Whatever, dude." Logan sighed, walking toward the library. "Just shut. The fuck . UP."

"Hold your calls?" JR called after him as he slammed the library door. "I'm guessing that's a 'yes'."

* * *

For the next few hours, Logan remained closed up in the library. JR had his laptop in the kitchen and continued to research the avenues Logan had asked him to look into. One of the things he needed to have done was have the door bell attached to the garage apartment so that he could work in his own space and also answer when anyone happened to come to the door. Until that had been taken care of, JR would work in the house, screening anyone who may come by to disturb Logan.

JR had a short list of lightweight canoes and trailers and was now onto the project of getting hoops installed out by the garage.

He was startled when the doorbell rang a few minutes after 2:00 o'clock.

In the library, Logan sat at the desk, working on his laptop, occasionally consulting a thick folder at his left elbow. He looked at the clock on his computer and was simultaneously exchausted and surprised to see that so much time had passed. He heard the doorbell but paid no attention to it. He continued to work as he heard JR answer the door.

A few minutes later, he hit 'save' and stood up.

In the kitchen, he found JR, back at work at the center island.

"Sport's Authority is the place for outdoor hoops," JR announced without looking up from his screen. "Do you want them planted in concrete or portable? Portable is easy but—"

"Portable is fine." Logan cut him off. He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of orange juice, which he drank from and put back.

"Oh…you want me to put your name on that?" JR asked, making a face. "Or should I just warn Veronica that you've had your mouth all over everything in there?"

"She likes my mouth all over things. Who was at the door?"

"Ah…some boy named Sue. There are several types of portable hoops available…"

"Candy?"

"You want some candy?"

"No, was it a guy named 'Candy'?"

"Oh! Yeah." JR's head snapped around and he looked at Logan. "You _know _him?"

"What did he want?"

"I think he wanted a date. He had a bottle of wine—"

"Get him back."

"What? Why?"

"Find out what he wants." Logan grabbed an apple out of the basket on the counter and went back into his office.

JR ran a hand through his hair and thought for a moment. He really didn't want to have to ask Logan for a clue as to who the hell was Candy.

He jumped off the stool and went to the front door. Walking outside, he first looked up and down the street. He saw no one in any of the few cars parked nearby. He stood for a moment, thinking. Then he noticed a lone figure sitting on a bench down by the lake. Playing a hunch, he walked in that direction and sure enough, the slim young man he had shut the door on ten minutes earlier was sitting, bottle of wine on the bench next to him, throwing rocks at some ducks.

"Dude, what are you doing?" JR asked. "Cut it out, you might hit one."

"I hate ducks." Candy said. "And I hate you."

"Ah...sorry about that but it's my job. I protect Mr. Mars' privacy."

"Well, you suck."

"Don't take it personally. When he's working, no one gets to see him. It's not just you."

"I didn't know he worked. He said he lived off family money."

"He told _you _that? When?"

"Nunya! He didn't tell me he had a goon squad." Candy petulantly tossed another rock in the direction of the ducks, who thought he was tossing bread crumbs and kept scrambling toward the ripples his rocks made on the water. "Stupid ducks."

JR stifled a laugh at being called a 'goon squad' and said "Well, Mr. Mars asked me to come find you. He's curious as to why you showed up."

"He is? He did?" Candy's entire posture changed. From a slumped, dejected figure, he grabbed the bottle of wine and shot to his feet, standing ramrod straight. "He does?"

"Come on," JR sighed. _What the fuck did Moneybags get up to before I got to town? _

They walked across the street and up to the house. Inside, Logan had left his office and was sprawled on the new couch, blasting the hell out of something on his Xbox. He looked over his shoulder as they came in the front door, hit 'stop' and tossed the controller.

"Candy. What's up?"

"I…um…Marla asked me to bring you this," Candy walked into the living room and held out the bottle of wine to Logan. "She wanted me to see how you were settling in, now that it's been a month. Standard procedure."

JR frowned and looked at Candy as Logan took the bottle of Stag's Leap Cabernet.

"It's been ten days." Logan said, putting the wine bottle on the new coffee table in front of him. "And you don't work for Marla, you work for Bruce. What's really up?"

"Ugghh." Candy groaned and dropped into an arm chair. "Have you ever wanted to kill someone with your bare hands?"

"Yes." Logan said, firmly. "I've actually attempted it more than once."

"No way." Candy sighed, dramatically. "If you wanted to kill someone, they'd be dead. You_ get_ what _you_ want."

"You're probably right. There are some fates worse than death." Logan said, thinking of the day his former friend, Mercer Hayes had been sentenced to 25 years to life for multiple rapes and assaults. Mercer was young, attractive and built along delicate lines. His time in prison was bound to be a bit more poetically just than most.

"I really wanted to kill Bruce yesterday." Candy said, vehemently. "I could actually see my hands around his fat, stupid throat and I really would have done it except that would have meant actually touching him. So I quit. I quit my job."

JR leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms, looking expectantly at Logan to see what his employer would do with this information.

"What's any of that got to do with me?" Logan asked, relaxing back into the depths of the couch.

"I…uh…I thought maybe you could help."

"I'm not hiring."

"No, not with that. I can _get _a job. It's…well…"

"Spit it out, Candy; I don't have all day." Logan was getting bored.

"You don't?" JR asked in surprise. Logan frowned at him and held up a warning finger.

"See that?" Candy looked between the two of them, excitedly. "_That's _what I need help with! I'm sick of getting harassed by queens and having girls ask me about their shoes. I want to be able to shut guys up with a look and a gesture like _that!_"

"_What?" _JR asked.

"I can't help you, Candy." Logan shook his head. "JR has to do what I say because I pay him, that's all."

"Bullshit!" JR barked. "He can't help you, Candy because it's something he was born with AND he's been perfecting it for twenty three years! Come on, Admiral! This is EXACTLY what I was saying earlier!"

"You were talking about chicks," Logan objected. "Not guys!"

"It's the same thing!" JR insisted. "You are just as good at manipulating guys as you are with women. How long did it take you to convince Duncan to let you move in with him? Twenty minutes? Twenty seconds?"

"Well, Duncan's worth four times what I am so that pretty much shoots your theory to hell, doesn't it?"

"Duncan was medicated up to his eyeballs, he hardly counts." JR shrugged.

"He was off the antidepressants by then. What about Dick? Enbom? Chip? Casey? They were all born with money."

"Dick is a moron and Casey _joined a cult_."

"You _know_ you're making my point for me." Logan said, smirking. He turned to Candy. "Why'd you come to me? Is it because you know I have money?"

"NO." Candy frowned. "Money can't help me. I came to you because…because…fuck. Are you really gonna make me say it?"

"SAY IT." JR said.

"How am I supposed to help you if you can't tell me what you need help with?" Logan prompted.

"FINE." Candy said, staring at his feet. "I came to you because you seem like the coolest guy I've ever met. In real life."

"FUUUCK." JR threw his hands in the air.

"HA!" Logan leaped off the couch and pointed at JR. "Money can't buy THAT, asshole!"

"Whatever." JR mumbled. Logan dropped back down on the couch, crossing his feet on the coffee table, triumphant.

"You shut up!" Candy squealed at JR. "I have a real problem, here! I get hit on by homos everywhere I go and _I'm SICK of it._ I know I'll never be like _you,_" He looked at Logan, "But I figured you, of all people, could help me at least come across as a normal, run of the mill, _straight_ guy."

"Kind of like Fonzie teaching Ritchie to fight." JR mused.

"More like Fonzie teaching Joanie to fight." Logan corrected him, looking critically at Candy. "Look, dude; I'm not running some Straight Eye for the Metro Guy camp, here. I can't help you."

"You mean you don't want to help me." Candy sniffed.

"Yeah, that too." Logan stood up and headed for the kitchen. "Thanks for the wine."

"Come on, how hard can it be? I don't want you to turn me into some hard core action hero, or anything!" Candy pleaded. "I just want to be ordinary! The kind of guy nobody notices. Like him." He nodded at JR.

"Thank you." JR said, sarcastically.

"You have no idea what it's like to be persecuted." Candy whined.

"Are you serious?" JR asked. "I'm a Jew. We _invented _being persecuted."

"Whatever! There aren't any Nazis in Minneapolis. But there are gays _everywhere _and the only problem I have with that is they think I'm one of them and I'M NOT. You laugh, but have you ever been hit on by a _dude?"_

That stopped Logan dead in his tracks, half way to the kitchen. He spun on his heel and pointed at Candy. "Sit down." He commanded. "I'll be right back." He went into the kitchen and placed the wine bottle on the counter, then opened the fridge and pulled out three beers.

Back in the living room, he handed a bottle to JR and one to Candy, then flopped back on the couch and opened his own.

"Is this really about not getting hit on by queers or do you just want to get laid?" He demanded of Candy.

"I get laid." Candy said, indignantly. "I have a girlfriend. She's not the hottest thing in town but she's really...dirty."

"Really?" both Logan and JR were interested in that.

"Like what?" Logan asked.

"What's her name?" JR asked, glaring at Logan.

"Roy."

There was a moment of silence then JR dropped his face in his hand and laughed till his shoulders shook.

"Yeah, I hear it's only weird for like, a minute." Logan said.

"What? It's short for 'RoyAnne'. She's named after her grandfather!"

"That's a good story; stick to it." Logan nodded.

"This isn't about a girlfriend." Candy insisted. "I just don't want to be attractive to gays."

"Are you really surprised by that?" Logan looked Candy over. "Grow your hair out an inch or two and put on some heels and straight guys will ask you out. Hell, put on a skirt and JR would hit on you right now."

JR opened his mouth to object, closed it, looked Candy up and down and shrugged.

"First," Logan said, "Never drink wine unless you're with a girl. Not until you're over forty. Beer. Stick with beer and you'll be okay."

"I kinda like rum." Candy said.

"No. Rum is for mixing and mixing is for pussies."

"Are you gonna teach him how to be a guy, or a drunk?" JR asked.

"Dude, if he sticks to beer, he'll be fine!" Logan assured them. "You gotta get a decent hair cut. Go to a barber, not a stylist."

"Do you go to a barber?" Candy asked.

"His stylist charges $200.00 a cut!" JR put in.

"My stylist would try to marry you." Logan told Candy. "That's the problem, remember?"

"What, should I get like, a crewcut?"

"No! God!" Logan shuddered.

"I'd love to see _that_." JR snickered.

"And what is up with your clothes?" Logan winced. "Everything you're wearing looks like it came out of your sister's closet. Where do you get this stuff?"

"Abercrombie."

"Never set foot in that brothel again." Logan looked at JR. "Where do you shop?"

"JCPenney's."

"Go there. Get some Levi jeans, _not too tight_, some solid colored tee-shirts, anything plaid…do you have any suggestions?" he asked JR.

"Yeah. Nothing in pink, lavender, or yellow. "

"Good. In fact, if you've ever seen a baby wear it; don't."

"Layers are okay," JR said, looking at Logan. "You do that button down shirt thing open over a tee shirt. That always worked."

"Oh, thanks for noticing." Logan smirked.

"Should I be taking notes?" Candy asked.

"Dude, if you need to take notes, just give it up, come out of the closet and accept yourself." Logan rolled his eyes.

"Get some sports magazines!" JR said. "Look at those ads and dress accordingly."

"Good!" Logan nodded. "Except Beckham. That dude's totally gay."

"Well, he's British." JR said. "They're all pretty gay."

"They are." Candy nodded.

"Rent Rescue Me." Logan suggested. "If Tommy Gavin wouldn't wear it, do it or say it, then neither should you."

"So, it's not enough that you're suggesting he become a drunk, but now you want him to become a nasty, self destructive drunk?"JR asked.

"Winding up a drunk is the risk we all have to take." Logan said. "It's part of what makes us guys."

"He's right." JR said to Candy. "Be careful."

"Got all that?" Logan asked. "Haircut, clothes, Rescue Me. Oh, and beer. Work on that and come back in a week."

"Thanks, Mr. Mars!" Candy said.

"You can call me Logan." He shook his head, suddenly exasperated. "What the fuck kind of a name is 'Candy' for a dude?"

"It's been my nickname since kindergarten." Candy said. "It's kind of a no-brainer."

"How's that?" JR asked.

"Well, my last name is Kane. Wouldn't you call anyone you knew named Kane 'Candy'?" Candy explained.

JR and Logan both stared at him for a long moment.

"No," Logan finally said. "I can honestly say it would never have crossed my mind."

"What's your real name?" JR asked.

"Alice. Like Cooper." Candy said. JR and Logan looked at each other. JR looked away immediatley and bit down hard on his lower lip.

"Candy it is." Logan said.

to be continued...


	9. Chapter 9 There But For the Grace

Chapter 9 There but for the Grace...

Veronica walked into the kitchen from the garage and tossed her keys on the counter. The brief walk through the back yard had felt like crossing a sauna. She breathed a sigh of relief as she entered the air conditioned kitchen.

"I thought Minnesota was supposed to be cold," she muttered to herself. "No one warned me it was so frikkin' _hot."_

She went over to the refrigerator and looked inside for the cold water carafe that Logan always kept there. Seeing the carton of orange juice, she took it out, looked surreptitiously around and drank deeply.

It had been a disappointing day at work. More dossiers full of dull, rote work and now she was firmly in the cross hairs of Agent Blythe, who seemed to spend all day lurking around corners, waiting to catch Veronica taking a deep breath so she could accuse the rookie of wasting time. Fortunately, Veronica was neither lazy nor sloppy. She was easily able to show progress in all of her assignments. Blythe was very careful not to repeat the mistake of making her criticisms personal. Still, it irritated Veronica to have to defend her work three or four times a day. Tuski was a breath of fresh air, but her comments and jokes only served to make Veronica laugh and draw the ire of the ubiquitous Blythe.

A fender bender on 94 had made the commute home take longer than usual and the temperature in the 90s had shortened tempers on the road. Veronica had stopped paying any attention to the rude gestures she saw motorist flipping each other before she even left St. Paul.

_Minnesota 'nice', my ass. _

Compared to the traffic in Southern California, her commute was a breeze but she still felt like she'd been through the wringer. By the time she had left the office, all she wanted was the company of her husband, who could always lift her out of the doldrums, whether it was brought on by heat, humidity or professional boredom.

She put the carton of orange juice back in the fridge and as she was turning away, caught sight of the wine bottle on the counter, a ribbon and card attached. She picked it up and looked at the card.

'_Here's to a warm house.—Marla'. How nice!_

She pulled out her phone and dialed. "Marla, it's Veronica Mars." She said when Marla's voice mail picked up. "I just wanted to say 'thanks' for the bottle of wine. Everything is going really well; call me when you get this."

She smiled, thinking that she'd love to show her Realtor what she and Logan had done so far with the house. She had liked Marla and Elliot. They had made her feel like a normal young woman; a newlywed, looking for her first house. Normal was the elusive concept Veronica felt she had been chasing for years and she greatly appreciated anything that made her feel like she was approaching it. So, she and Logan were hardly your average young married couple; Marla and Elliot had not treated them like freaks. Bruce had but he was such an ass, Veronica didn't count him. She also had a few questions she thought Marla would be a good person to ask, such as what were the best furniture showrooms in town?

The living room now boasted a large, deep, comfortable couch to go with the arm chairs and ottoman Logan had bought but they had no side tables, lamps or accessories that made a house feel like a home. Logan had declared himself finished and the house furnished the moment he hooked up his game cube.

_A dining room table would be nice, _she thought as she walked through the empty expanse past the kitchen work space. _Eating at the counter is okay and the patio set is great but eventually we'll need a table. Who knows? Some day we may actually want to entertain. Maybe._

"Maybe not." She said out loud as she walked into the living room and saw Logan sprawled on the couch playing a video game. The sight of him made the idea of inviting extra people into the house extremely unappealing. Looking at him not only made her mouth water, it made every idea but that of being alone with him, preferably naked, fly out of her head.

"Hi honey!" she sang. "I'm home! They kept me in the coal mine all day and I'm tense. What are you gonna do about it?"

"I could make you a martini." He suggested.

"There's something about a martini that just _begs_ to be thrown in someone's face." She shook her head, walking toward the couch. "So that won't do it."

"You want to blast the hell out of something?" he nodded at the screen.

"Virtual blasting has lost its allure since I became range qualified." She shrugged.

"You wanna go to the range?"

"Not if it means getting back in the car."

"I could run you a bath." He tossed the controller onto the couch.

"It's a hundred degrees outside." She sighed. "A bath is the _last_ thing I want."

"Hot, are you?"

"So hot." She stopped in front of him. "Hot and _tense."_

"I _love it_ when you talk dirty." He pulled her down into his lap. "Wanna wrestle?"

"It's too hot to wrestle." She whined but made no move to get off his lap. In fact, she had gone limp the moment he pulled her down. He, on the other hand, had done the opposite.

"It's actually nice and cool in here." He said, tossing her shoes on the floor. "If you weren't hideously over dressed, you'd realize that it's the perfect temperature for wrestling."

"Maybe…" she smiled as he removed her blazer. "But this couch is hardly…a large enough canvas for self expression."

"Are we talking wrestling as an art form, now?" He tossed her jacket over the couch and went to work on the buttons of her blouse.

"Is it an art? Or is it a science?" She mused.

"Boxing is a science." He murmured, kissing her neck as he slipped her blouse from her shoulders.

"Boxing? Oh, yes. It's _chess _that's an art." She remembered.

"Only when done correctly." A quick twist and he had her off of his lap and laid out on the couch as he slid down the zipper of her skirt.

"Do you play chess?" she asked as he tugged her skirt down over her hips.

"Never on purpose." He leaned forward and kissed her bare abdomen as he discarded her skirt.

"I bet you'd be goooood at it." She moaned, lacing her fingers through his hair.

"There are so many other things I'd rather be good at." He slid his hand up her thigh and watched her face as her eyes fluttered shut. "There's a certain amount of skill involved in making…art…in a limited space."

"I don't see you working in miniature." She breathed.

"I can work anywhere."

"I'll bet you can."

"Feeling a bit cooler, are we?" He pursed his lips and blew lightly across her neck, shoulders and breasts.

"Oddly enough; no." Her lids flew open and she looked him in the eye. "Upstairs. _Now."_

"Everything we need is right _here." _He rocked his hips against her. "Why move?"

"Um…because the only thing between us, the parkway and the lake is a large pane of clear glass?"

"Oh." He looked out through the glass wall toward the lake. "It's okay. No one's there. Its dinner time," his voice dropped to a whisper in her ear. "I'll bet we've got forty five minutes before anyone walks by."

"_Logan!" _she laughed but pushed at him.

"Shhh." He kissed her. "Where's your sense of adventure?"

"Don't confuse 'adventure' with 'exhibitionism'. Both can be found up stairs. Let's go."

"Man, you've got a lot of bourgeois hang ups, don't you?"

"I'm not exactly comfortable making love in the front yard in broad daylight, no."

"So you admit you love me?"

"Only twice as much as I've ever loved anything else and I'd be more than happy to show you how much if you'd just get off me and take me upstairs."

"I really want to take you right here. Are you saying that if it weren't daylight, you'd be okay with it?"

"Well, yeah…of course. Or if we had any window coverings. I just…this is not something I'd care to share with the world at large."

_At least this time you'd be with me. _He thought, but had the brains not to say. "Upstairs, it is." He said, rolling off of her. "I'll give you a two second head start. We're doing it wherever I catch you."

* * *

Back at the FBI offices in downtown St. Paul, Section Chief Jerry Larson looked at the three agents gathered in his office.

"I think the meeting served its purpose, today." He said. "What's your take, Agent Blythe?"

"I think Agent Mars is very capable, sir, as far as that goes but she's rude, disrespectful and cocky."

"How's her work?" Larson asked.

"It's very good, actually." Blythe conceded. "With her background, she could probably do these kinds of checks in her sleep which could lead to sloppiness."

"Has she been sloppy?"

"No." Blythe admitted. "Her checks are thorough. She looks into avenues that most rookies wouldn't think of."

"Four years as a P.I. has seasoned her." Larson nodded. "She should be way ahead of the game."

"Should be is not the same as 'is', sir." Blythe said. "The problem with Agent Mars is not one of aptitude, but attitude. As I said; she's rude, disrespectful and dangerously cocky. Rude is irritating, disrespectful damages morale and cocky gets field agents killed. I think she needs more time in the bullpen to smooth off those edges. She thinks she's already a superstar and she hasn't even made the team yet."

"Thank you," Chief Larson nodded. "Your input is very valuable to me. You may go."

Agent Blythe looked a bit surprised at her quick dismissal. She looked at the two other agents in the office as if she wanted to say more, but stood and took her leave. As the door closed behind her, Chief Larson looked at the two remaining agents.

"Morris, Waletski, what do you guys think?" Larson asked.

"She's the hot little blond, right?" Waletski looked through the folders on his lap. "She looks like a kid. Could come in real handy in the field. She'd be great undercover and I have to believe she'd be killer as an interrogator. Who wouldn't want to spill their secrets to her?"

"Oh, that's professional." Larson frowned. Waletski grinned. He and Larson had come up the ranks together and he knew he could be politically incorrect with his Section Chief.

"She'd be perfect for sting ops concerning politicos and other high end bad guys." Waletski insisted. "We don't get many assets like her. I say we get her out there as soon as possible."

"How about you, Morris?" Larson looked at the young agent. "You've seen her among her peers. Is Blythe right? Too cocky? Not that I think Blythe knows shit about morale, but could she be dangerous?"

"You know, Chief, it ain't braggin if you can back it up." Agent Ted Morris said. "She and her old man worked the Lilly Kane case for almost two years _after_ Abel Koontz was convicted. They dug up stuff no one else would have found."

"Aaron Echolls was acquitted." Waletski pointed out.

"Yeah, so at eighteen, she wasn't an unimpeachable witness." Morris said. "She can learn to testify."

"It took guts to go after Mr. Hollywood." Larson nodded. "It took guts to stick with that case at all. I'm familiar with the details of what happened. Echolls lawyers tap danced all over Mars head but plenty of ineptitude occurred before she ever took the stand. If missing evidence ruined a federal case, we'd have much bigger problems to worry us than whether our agents give good testimony. "

"She's tough, sir." Morris said. "In fact, it seems to me that what Blythe called 'cocky' is nothing more than Mars showing her guts. In fact, if you want to talk about who's disrespectful, it was _Blythe_ who…."

"I didn't say I wanted to talk about that." Larson cut him off.

"Sorry, sir. Blythe was downright rude to Mars in the conference room before the meeting began. She seemed to have a bug up her ass. Anyway, Mars stood right up to Blythe and she didn't like it. As for morale, the rest of us thought Mars was _great._ She's tougher'n hell and I have no reservations about saying that I'd feel confident to have her back me up in the field. She's a chick whose feelings aren't gonna get in the way of the job. She'll shoot first, figuratively speaking, of course, and ask the right questions later."

"Thank you." Larson said. "That's all I need from you today, Morris."

"Happy to help, sir." Ted stood and excused himself.

"Well?" Waletski asked as the door closed behind Morris. "What about that other thing?"

"What? You mean the fact that she's a material witness in an open kidnapping case?" Larson shot back.

"No. Although, if she did have anything to do with the disappearance of Faith Manning, she'd be worth her weight in gold on the kidnapping task force." Waletski grinned. "As far as the reports go, they still have no idea how Duncan Kane skipped the country, if in fact, he did."

"A billion dollars makes it easy to disappear, I guess."

"You'd think that would make it easier to find him, wouldn't you?" Waletski asked. "They've been shadowing his folks for nearly five years now and _nothing._ How do you hide that kind of money? He can _never _surface. Kidnapping charges don't go away."

"Not our problem, Wally." Larson said. "There's never been any evidence to support the idea that Mars had any hand in Kanes' disappearance and there's not a hint that she's had any contact with him since he vanished."

"So, she is still being watched?"

"Not by us." Larson shrugged. "We closed the book on her years ago. The Agents in charge may still be offering for information on her, who knows?"

"Man. If they're still watching the ex girl friend, they've really got nothing. I mean, fer Christ sake, she _married_ his best friend. That kinda tells me Duncan Kane is off her radar."

"Ah yes. Logan Echolls. _That's _the other thing you meant, isn't it?"

"Yup." Waletski nodded.

"That young man has access to circles and people we can't get anywhere near. _His _access gets _her _access."

"And her access is our access." Waletski finished.

"Seems like a terrible waste not to exploit Agent Mars fortuitous marriage." Larson nodded.

"Bad idea." Waletski said, firmly.

"How do you mean?"

"Have you read that kids file?"

"There's a file on him?" Larson frowned.

"No, I'm just talking what pops up if you Google him. Youtube, People, the Enquirer… He's a head case."

"Considering his back ground, it'd be a miracle if he weren't."

"And she married him!" Waletski exclaimed. "That says _something _about her!"

"Does it? What?" Larson demanded.

"I don't know! That she's a poor judge of character? That she can be bought? That she's a sucker for a baby face?"

"You know, Logan Echolls hasn't been anywhere near the lime light since…I don't know…2006? Since the initial hoopla surrounding his dad's trial, he's been nowhere. Every year around the anniversary of the Kane girl's death, the scandal sheets have orgasms digging it all up again. Every spring there are full color spreads about the tragedy of Aaron Echolls last days. But there's never anything fresh from the kid. If he were as bad as you're suggesting, he could have his own talk show by now and I don't mean on _cable, _either. Major network, prime time. We live in an age where Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie are featured in very fuckin' issue of every entertainment rag and they're only the untalented offspring of a single celebrity!"

"Who the hell is Paris Hilton's famous parent?"

"She doesn't even have one! Her name alone is enough. That's my point. Logan Echolls is the son of a gorgeous, famous mom who met a tragic end and an Oscar winning dad who's last days were marred by scandal and tragedy. The son would have to be as ugly as Quasimodo and as inarticulate as my dog to turn off the public. I've seen his Larry King interview; he's neither. "

"So…?"

"So, if the kid is still the jackass he was in high school, at least he has the good grace to be so in private. I believe _that _says something about him."

"Huh." Waletski chewed on that. "Didn't think of that."

"That's why I make the big bucks, Wally." Larson grinned at his old friend. "You know, he goes by the name Mars, now."

"Does he?"

"What does _that _tell you?"

"That he's not as dumb as he looks?"

"Bingo." Larson said.

The two of them sat and thought for a few moments. The opportunity to use a highly connected Hollywood insider was extremely tempting.

"We'd have to move very carefully here," Wally said.

"Yep."

"What are you thinking?"

"Well, first things first." Larson said. "Find out everything you can about the kid. Not the crap that's public record; what's he been up to since the Larry King interview in November of '06? Don't hand this off to a junior agent, Wally. This is _your _assignment. You tread very delicately. If there's so much as a whiff that we're nosing around, it blows his usefulness. Nothing on paper. We need to know if he's a nut job. Once we establish his character, then we offer Agent Mars an avenue out of Blythe's bullpen."

"Should we tell Blythe to tighten the screws? Really make Mars chomp at the bit to get out?"

"Didn't sound like Blythe needed to be told that, now, did it?" Larson chuckled.

"Seems to me like the planets are aligning on this thing." Wally mused.

"We'll see." Larson said. "Find out if our promising young agent married an upstanding citizen."

"You know, even if he's a pampered brat, he could still be useful."

"Too risky."

"Not if he's never in the loop."

"Too risky." Larson insisted. "Never bank on spouses keeping each other out of the loop. Either the loop breaks or the marriage does. Too risky."

"We keep our wives out of the loop everyday!"

"We don't use our wives as assets, asshole."

"Oh. Yeah. Good point."

* * *

"You seem a bit more relaxed," Logan picked up Veronica's hand and let it fall limply to the mattress. "Did we work all the tension out? I've still got a few tricks up my sleeve."

"You're not... wearing any... sleeves." Veronica mumbled. "I…can't even...move. _Damn _you're good."

"Chess isn't the only game that's an art form. What can I say? You're my muse."

"I'm a muse for you and you amuse me. We're a match made in Heaven." She snuggled up against him. "Now I'm hungry."

"God, you're impossible to satisfy." He sighed.

"Gotta keep you on your toes." She smiled.

"I didn't think it was my _toes _you were trying to keep me on."

"I do enjoy you _en pointe."_ She giggled.

"Ballet. Yet another art form. Pretty sure _en pointe _doesn't mean what you think it means."

"Pretty sure it does!"

"Yes. So. You're hungry." He rolled to the edge of the bed and stood. "If you don't mind getting back in the car, I have a plan. Veronica?"

She was asleep.

He sat back down on the edge of the bed and smiled, letting his eyes wander over her naked body for a long moment. Then he stood and went to take a shower.

Ten minutes later, he came out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist. He bounced onto the bed beside her and ran a finger down her spine. She opened her eyes and smiled.

"Take a shower." He said. "Throw on some fancy duds. We're goin' out."

"We are? Where are we going?" she rolled onto her side and propped her head up on one hand.

"Guy at the beach told me about a place out high way seven. It's right on the biggest lake in the metro area; Minnetonka."

"Minnetonka?"

"Yep. If I remember my Dances With Wolves, that would mean 'big water'."

"Or 'buffalo water'."

"No, that would be 'Minnetatonka.' Extra 'ta'."

"Would 'Minne_tata_tonka' mean 'big breasts'?"

"Big _floating _breasts. That's a popular feature at Lake Minnetonka."

"How far away is this place?" She sat up.

"Not that far. Half hour, tops. We'll take the Ferrari. Get dressed."

"How fancy?" she moved to the edge of the bed.

"Just dress like a girl, please."

"I always dress like a girl!" she said, going toward the bathroom. "_You _dress like a girl."

"We'll be eating outside. It's casual. Wear what you've got on, I don't mind."

She blew him a kiss over her bare shoulder and went into the bathroom.

* * *

A little over an hour later, they were sitting at a table overlooking the marina at Maynard's, eating dinner and watching the boats and the sunset over Lake Minnetonka.

"Hey, I saw that bottle of wine." Veronica said, cutting into her porter house. "I left a 'thank you' message on Marla's voice mail."

"Oh, yeah... Marla didn't leave that, Candy dropped it off." Logan told her, tipping back in his chair with his feet on the deck rail.

"He did? Why? I know you told me he's not gay but I gotta say; he seems quite smitten with you."

"He wants my help."

"With…? Does he know how bad you are at math?"

"He wants to be less…or more…" Logan frowned and shook his head.

"Come on. You can tell me." She cajoled. "I won't sing to the coppers."

"You _are_ the coppers, Sugarpants."

"Well, I'll keep it to myself, then. What's up with the Candy Man?"

"He's tired of being gay bait."

"And he thought you could help?" she frowned. "Doesn't he know about your fan base?"

"My _what?" _Logan's feet and the front legs of his chair came down hard on the deck.

"I'm kidding!" she laughed. "You have no fans. Well, besides Leo and Vinnie…and Piz, of course…does he still count?"

"I thought we agreed we'd never mention him again."

"No, we didn't. I'm just sayin'; he never worshipped me, even while we dated, the way he worships you."

"Yeah, well. If he ever tried to worship me the way he worshipped you, I'd have him killed."

"You almost had him killed as it was." She grimaced.

"Yeah…I told Candy that."

"What? Why?"

"I don't know. He asked me if I'd ever tried to kill anyone with my bare hands. Looking back, I'm pretty sure he was being rhetorical but my innate honesty forced me to say yes."

"Lord, yes. It was your favorite hobby for a while there. But why did you have to tell Candy that?"

"Seemed appropriate."

"Who does Candy want to kill? I'm warning you though, as an officer of the law, I may have to step in."

"Bruce."

"Oh. Never mind; I didn't hear a thing. Wait a minute; you're not really helping Candy kill anyone, are you? 'Cuz I gotta say no to that. I thought your killing days were over."

"They are. My will to kill is dead. Candy realized that to throttle Bruce he'd have to touch him so he came up with an alternate plan. That's how he wound up at our house."

"Ah. The light goes on. He sought advice on how _not _to be gay bait. From _you?"_

"I'm not gay bait." Logan objected to her tone.

"Whatever you say." She rolled her eyes and went back to her steak.

"I actually thought of having Candy shadow you for a day or two." He said dryly. "Then you came downstairs dressed in that." He leered appreciatively at Veronica in her nearly transparent mini dress. Spaghetti straps and filmy layers of pale green skimmed her figure giving the impression that although she was covered, she was only an instant away from nudity. Logan approved.

"Hey, I can do girly on demand." She batted her eyelashes and reached out to push his leg with one foot, clad in a sandal of thin gold straps with a two inch heel.

"Yeah, you can." He smiled. _Girly? You can do goddess on command._

"May I ask _why _you're condescending to help Candy? You barely know him."

"I find him a rather fascinating—"

"I'm beginning to understand his problem."

"—character. You know, considering how we spent the earlier part of our evening, I'd think you'd stop insinuating that I swing both ways. You, of all people, should know _exactly _how far I swing to one side."

"Oh, I do, Baby…" she breathed in her best porn star voice, letting her eyes slide down to his crotch. "_I do."_

"Will you cut it out?" he laughed. "I thought you'd approve of me helping out poor, confused Candy."

"I do approve! I'm not implying that you swing both ways, I'm just saying that _anyone _who is attracted to the male form is gonna find you irresistable, Doll Face. Believe me, if I were a gay dude, I'd be _all over you_."

"I'd settle for you being all over me, now."

_"_Unless you took a really thorough shower earlier, I _am_ all over you now." she leaned across the table and lowered her voice. "Want to know a secret? You're still all over me."

The breath left him in a whoosh and he stared at her, open mouthed before saying in a strangled voice "Have you _always_ been this dirty?"

"Lord, no." she sat back in her chair and took another bite of her dinner. "You're my muse."

"I'm the luckiest man on the planet." He mumbled to his dinner.

"That's my boy." she smiled. "Seriously, about Candy; I'm just curious as to your motivation."

"Helping out my fellow man isn't motivation enough?"

"Hi." She cocked her head to one side. "Have we met?"

Logan sighed and looked out at the water for a moment. "I wasn't gonna help him." He finally said. "In fact, I told him I couldn't. Didn't want to. Then he said something to JR that changed my mind."

Veronica knew better than to say anything. She looked at Logan and waited for him to continue.

"He asked JR if he'd ever been hit on by a dude." He looked at her, clearly expecting her to connect the dots.

"Beaver?" she whispered. Suddenly, the setting sun didn't feel so warm on her skin.

"Part of it, but…no." He looked back out at the water before continuing. "It happened to me, once. I mean, I wasn't even sure about it at the time but it creeped the hell out of me."

"Logan—"

"It was when I won that essay contest." He met her eyes again.

"Woody Goodman." She whispered, feeling sick to her stomach. She put down her fork. "Oh, God Logan."

"Nothing happened." He assured her, surprised by the emotion in her words. "He just kind of…"

"You didn't play baseball. _You were never a Shark_. Oh, God."

"No. _Nothing happened."_

"But it could have! If you had been a player; if you had been on one of those teams; your relationship with your Dad; you would have been a perfect target! They prey on the kids who don't—God, Logan!"

"But I _wasn't_. Veronica, I didn't tell you this to freak you out; you asked me why I said I'd try to help Candy. That's why."

"I'm sorry." She shook her head in dismay. "Here we are, having a great time in this beautiful place and all I can think of is that the worst thing that ever happened to me…the thing that turned Beaver into a monster, could have happened to you!"

"But it didn't. I never met hizzoner the perv till I was big enough to kill him with my bare hands."

"What did he do to you?"

"_Nothing._ He squeezed my arm. I thought it was weird but I didn't think it meant anything till I found out about Beav. At the time I was just pissed off that he wouldn't let me fire the sheriff."

"You wanted to fire Lamb?" that made her smile.

"I wanted to _kill _Lamb. I thought I could _get away_ with firing him."

"Oh, I wish they had let you." She sighed but picked her fork back up. "it might have saved his life."

"Doubt it. Darwinism was gonna claim that guy one way or another."

"You're probably right." She sighed, digging back into her dinner. "I'm glad you're helping Candy. It's nice. Don't be too surprised if it turns out he's got a crush on you. Either way, I'm glad your will to kill is behind you."

"Yeah. I haven't tried to kill anyone in _years_." He lied.

To be continued...


	10. Chapter 10 Protect and Serve

Chapter 10 Protect and Serve

"I want to drive." Veronica said as they came out of Maynard's. "Let me saddle up that bronc." Without a word, Logan tossed her the keys.

Fifteen minutes later, he looked at her with a smirk on his face and said "FYI; when you're in a bright yellow Ferrari, going twenty five over the limit, you're _gonna _get stopped. It's Newton's fourth law of motion."

"Inertia says I was gonna keep going faster _until_ I got stopped." Veronica looked at him as she pulled off the shoulder. "What; no worries! I flashed him my 'Get out of Speeding Ticket Free' card."

"Yeah, I'm sure the bureau will be happy your credentials have been put to such good use."

"Quit bringing me down. When did you become Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes?"

"I _don't_ know." He said, sounding genuinely surprised.

"Man. This is a _machine_!" Veronica said. "We gotta get this thing out on the road; open her up!"

"Too bad there's no autobahn in the states."

"I'll say. There is, however, the great state of Montana. They only have a speed limit because the fascist feds forced 'em to establish one. Hundreds of miles of interstate with no traffic and no troopers."

"Are you allowed to talk about the feds that way, now that you are one?"

"I'm off duty. So how about it? Montana; might be worth the trip."

"You do know that Montana is clear on the other side of North Dakota, right?"

"God, we really are in the middle of the country, aren't we?"

"My people have always referred to this as 'fly-over country'."

"How dismissive." She frowned.

"My people are assholes."

Soon they had reached Lake Calhoun, the turn to Dean Parkway and home. The temperature had dropped with the sun and it was now a beautiful, comfortable night under a starry, summer sky.

"Should we crack open that bottle Candy brought us?" Logan asked as they strolled through the back yard to the house.

"Mmmm. Yes. That sounds delightful." Veronica said. "Bring it out here?"

"As you wish." He went into the kitchen to open the wine. Veronica dropped into a chair on the patio. Almost immediately, she was attacked by mosquitoes. She jumped up and ran to the kitchen, where she almost crashed into Logan, coming back out with the wine and a pair of glasses.

"I was comin' back." he assured her.

"Bugs!" she shook her head.

"Plan B." He nodded. "Sun room."

In the sunroom, Veronica held the door while he brought in two of the chairs off the patio. The breeze cooled the night enough so that they turned off the air conditioning and opened all the windows in the sun room. With the lights off, it was as good as being outside. Better, if one factored in the mosquitoes.

"We need some furniture in here." Veronica said, accepting a glass from Logan. "This will be such a great room to hang out in."

"Yep." He poured wine into her glass, then raised his own. "To my muse."

"And her adorable husband." Veronica added, raising her own glass.

* * *

_She was alone on the roof of the Neptune Grand. It was night and she was crying. She could see the lights of a tiny plane in the western sky. _

"_Nothing happened, Honey." She heard her father's voice and she turned. Keith was standing near the door to the stairway. "It's okay." He assured her._

"_LOGAN!" She screamed, pointing at the approaching plane just as it exploded in the sky over Neptune._

She awoke with a sob, her heart hammering, still gripped by the horror of her dream and disoriented by a bedroom full of noise and flash. She flinched in confusion with the next explosion of sound. What seemed like a gale force wind was blowing through the open bedroom windows, filling the sheers like spinnakers. She was on the verge of panic and then he was there, wrapping himself around her.

"Shh." He whispered, folding her up in his arms. "It's just a storm."

"Oh!" she gasped. The solid warmth of him dispelled the nightmare as she turned her face into his neck and inhaled deeply of his scent. She snaked her arm around him in relief, clutching him tightly as another impossibly loud crash shook the house.

"Hey, it's okay." He breathed into her ear. "It's nothing. Just thunder."

"I had a nightmare." She shook her head. "_you_…"

"It's over." He stroked her hair. "I'm here."

She nodded and sighed. Slowly, her heart rate decelerated and she was able to relax but she couldn't let go of him.

* * *

She opened her eyes in the morning to bright sunshine streaming in through the Eastern windows again. She was in the middle of the bed and Logan was half on top of her, one arm curled around her head. Even in his sleep, his attitude was one of possession and protection. She smiled, nuzzling him briefly, wishing she didn't have to get up so soon. Gently, she lifted his arm off of her and rolled to the edge of the bed.

He walked into the bathroom just as she was stepping out of the shower.

"Good morning," she said, reaching for a towel.

"Holy cow." He stopped and stared as she dried herself off. "You've ruined me for bathrooms forever."

"Finding a naked woman in your shower is one of the many perks of being married." She informed him as she hung the towel and reached for her robe.

"Aw, you ruined me for bathrooms a long time ago." He grabbed her as she tried to walk by, spun her around and sat her on the vanity, inserting himself between her knees and sliding his hands into her robe.

"We don't have time for this!" she protested, giggling, as he attacked her throat.

"Yeah, we do." He growled, pulling her tightly against him.

He was right.

* * *

When she got downstairs, all smoothed down and professional looking, he was at the table on the patio with a cup of coffee and the paper, his feet propped up on the chair next to him. She poured herself a cup and joined him, looking enviously at his bare feet and chest while she was zipped and buttoned into another business like suit. Clad only in pajama pants, his hair standing straight up, he looked good enough to eat…again. She looked out at the lawn, the grass lush, green and wet.

"So it really did rain last night." She said, sitting down. "I thought I'd dreamt it all."

"I know. If it weren't for the puddles and some tree debris, you'd never know."

"That was _wild. _Looks like it's gonna be a gorgeous day." She sipped her coffee. "Are you going to the lake?"

"Yeah, at least for a couple hours." He opened up the metro section of the paper.

"Lucky dog."

"Come with me." He looked at her over the paper.

"You know I can't."

"Your call." He turned back to the paper. "I swear this whole 'work' thing really cuts into our fun time."

"_My_ fun time. _Your_ time seems to be all in one piece." She grumbled.

"It's always more fun _with _you."

"Good to know. But I think our time apart makes the time together better."

"So you won't be eating your heart out with envy that I'm at the lake and you're at the office?"

"I love my work but...yeah, sometimes."

"Just so we're clear; we can get by without your income."

"Also good to know." She took another sip of coffee and shrugged. "I'm just not the 'lounging around at the beach having fun all day' sort of girl."

"I know. You're more a 'find the missing coed' sort of girl." He frowned at the newspaper.

"Well, that's fairly specific. What are you reading?"

"College student, 19 years old, last seen downtown…a week ago. Why do I read this stuff? It's such a downer."

"Well, yeah. Usually you just stick to the Wall Street Journal."

"Eh. Talk about a downer."

"'Eh'?"

"I'm learning to speak Minnesotan."

"Not 'ey'?"

"Minnesotan, not Canadian. It's a subtle difference, like 'recession' and 'depression'."

"Oh? My income may come in handy, yet."

"You betcha. Actually, Kane Software is up. Sales of the fiend's dvd's are still up. We're good."

"You spend the day at the beach and every night when you come home, you're worth more. God Bless America!"

"Every day _we're _worth more. We'll have hot dogs and apple pie for dinner tonight."

"That sounds_ awesome_. Gotta go." She finished her coffee and stood. "Try to stay out of trouble."

"It wasnt' my fault; I didn't start it." He said automatically.

"You never do," she said, dropping a kiss onto the top of his head.

* * *

"Morning, Veronica," Agent Tuski said, standing next to the coffee machine with Agent Sheppard.

"Good morning." Veronica smiled serenly as she floated past. Tuski rolled her eyes at Shep.

"I can't _wait _to meet that girl's husband." she said.

Veronica sat at her desk, stowed her bag in the bottom drawer and shook herself, trying to get into a more businesslike frame of mind. Her cell buzzed and she picked it up, saying brusquely "Mars."

"Veronica?" a female voice asked.

"Marla!" Veronica's voice changed instantly. "Sorry about the FBI greeting; I'm at the office. How are you?"

"I'm great. I got your message about the wine and I just had to call-"

"Oh, I know; you didn't send it. Logan told me Candy put your name on it and used it as an excuse to drop by. Poor guy wanted Logan's help with something and didn't think he could just ask."

"Candy? Did you hear he quit? Bruce is heartbroken. Called and accused me of wooing away his office help. I don't think he believes I didn't offer the boy a job. I'm not surprised he finally left; Bruce never could keep his hands to himself. Maybe Logan can show Candy how to belt that fat fuck in the face. Oh. Sorry. Bruce brings out the worst in me."

"Really? I could _not_ tell. I think that's exactly what Candy was hoping Logan could help him with. Fortunately, Logan gets a kick out of him. Say, Marla; I was thinking of calling you anyway. I _love _the house so much! We've begun to furnish it but...I need some help."

"Oh! I know a few decorators, would you like me to recommend someone?"

"No...Could I buy you lunch today and explain what I think I need?"

"Of course! Is Elliot invited? He'll mope all day if he's not."

"Of course Elliot is invited!" Veronica laughed. "But if Bruce shows up, I'm having him arrested."

"Oh, Bruce wouldn't be caught dead in any of the places I like to lunch."

* * *

It was another hot, windy day at Lake Calhoun. Logan had no idea what was normal for Minnesota but the weather since he'd moved to town had been a wind surfer's dream. The water was choppy but warm, the sun was hot, the air humid and the wind refreshing. Although he was new to the sport, its mysteries were familiar to him; his core strength and balance were excellent and his knowledge of sailing extensive. Simply put, it was a combination of two of his favorite past times and he picked it up easily, having a blast, flying the length and breadth of the city lake like a pro. If there was such a thing as golf on a sail board, he'd only come off the water to eat and see Veronica. He liked to spend a few hours each morning on the water before cloistering himself in the library and working all afternoon. Frequently, if he felt the need, he would head back to the lake for an hour or so before Veronica got home from work.

Like surfing, sail boarding provided him with peace and quiet. He had originally fallen for the sport because out on the water his father could neither join him nor reach him. You could go surfing with a large group and on the beach it would be a party but when you caught a wave, you were alone, no matter how many others rode the same swell.

Eventually he discovered that solitude had many rewards. It was out on the waves that he had solved many of his problems and come up with some of his best ideas. How to get Weevil reinstated in high school; using Hannah to force her dad to recant his perjury and throwing a replacement prom had all presented themselves on the water. The opportunity to go deep inside his own head as much as the pure physical exhilaration of it is what attracted him to the sport.

After the storm the night before, the lake was high and the wind monstrous. It was too strong for sailboats but the wind surfers were a crazy bunch and they were out in force. After a few hours, Logan was exhausted, hungry and full of ideas. He parked his board and sail near the grass and walked down the sand toward the gyroscope at the far end of the beach. It looked like fun.

He was halfway across the beach when he passed a young man in swim shorts going in the opposite direction.

"Hey, Logan." The other said.

"Hey, Josh." Logan automatically answered. They each went another step or two before they wheeled around in surprise and stared at each other, stunned.

"_What are you doing here_?" they asked, simultaneously.

Up in the parking lot, JR had arrived with the Range Rover. He had just gotten out of the car and saw Logan spin around in surprise. He frowned to see Logan stiffen in shock. As the stranger on the beach spoke to him, JR saw Logan run his hand nervously through his hair. JR hustled down toward the water's edge.

"I'm here whenever I'm not working." Josh laughed. "I live right there." He nodded at the Calhoun Beach Club, an old brownstone high rise on the other side of Lake Street. "What the _hell _are you doing here?"

"I'm…uh…" Logan started to laugh. "I'm hiding out. I never thought I'd run into anyone I knew here."

"Excuse me." JR inserted himself between Logan and the other young man. "Sir," he said to Logan "Your car is ready."

"No, no! Its okay, JR." Logan waved his henchman off. "He's okay. It's—"

"We're old friends." Josh put up a hand to cut Logan off, clearly not wanting his name spoken aloud.

"You can pack up my board," Logan said to JR. "It's over there."

"Very good, sir." JR nodded and threw one cold look up and down the interloper before heading across the beach for the equipment.

"Sorry about that." Logan said, running his hand through his hair again. "He's kind of a mother hen."

"Nah, it's okay. That's what's so great about this place; we're completely out of context. Nobody sees what they're not looking for."

"That's what I'm hoping." Logan admitted. "You're famous. I'm only infamous. It's worse."

"You'll get used to the fact that this isn't LA. " Josh laughed. "I, uh…I've thought about you a few times since…well…"

"Yeah. The past few years have been a lot better."

"Must have been tough. I always thought your dad was…"

Logan stiffened, instinctively. He hated it when industry people tried to him how great his dad was.

"…a fucking tool. I know there are people who gave you crap after that King interview…"

"They tried," Logan corrected him with a smirk. "I declined delivery."

"That's what I always liked about you, kid; you never took shit from anybody." Josh laughed. "Not even your old man. Sorry I didn't…"

"_There's _an occassion Hallmark doesn't make a card for. Yet. Fuck it. Seriously, dude; how'd you find this place? We are in the middle of nowhere."

Josh spread his arms wide, embracing the lake, the shore and the sky, saying "I grew up here! This is my home town. My whole family is here."

"Really?" Logan experienced an emotion he felt before but rarely recognized; envy. "Why'd you leave?"

"I wanted to be an actor! And it was winter." Josh grinned. "But I come back every chance I get."

"I'm never leaving."

"Dude." Josh said seriously. "It's August. Wait a few months."

"That's what I keep hearing. How bad can it get?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

* * *

Up in the lot, JR finished putting away the board and sails. He stood by the car, watching Logan and Josh, suspiciously. He knew he'd seen the guy before but for the life of him couldn't remember where.

"JR." Logan said as they approached the car. "We're gonna grab some lunch. Josh will drop me off, so you can take the rover home."

"Of course." JR nodded."I'll see you at the house later, sir."

"Didn't you have some stuff to do today at noon?" Logan asked him. "Over at the sailing dock?"

"Oh. Yeah." JR grinned. "Later." He started for the Tin Fish as Logan and Josh headed for the cross walk and the sidewalk café; The View, on the first floor of the Calhoun Beach Club.

* * *

Veronica followed Marla's directions to the Longfellow Grill. On the Minneapolis side of the river, it seemed like a good halfway point from their separate offices. Veronica walked into the old style diner and saw Marla and Elliot sitting in a booth near the windows. She bypassed the hostess and wound her way past the formica tables and vinyl boothes toward them. Marla saw her coming and waved her over.

"Hey." Veronica said, sliding into the booth next to Elliot. "It's good to see you again."

"You look _adorable._" Elliot said. "Much too pretty for a cop and _much _too put together for government work. How is, uh...how's Mr. Mars?"

"Oh, he's fine." Veronica tucked her bag behind her in the booth and missed Elliot mouth the words "_So Fine" _to Marla or the frown Marla shot back at him. "He's completely in love with the lakes. We've been exploring the bike paths on my days off and he spends every minute he can on a sail board. Last night, we went out to Lake Minne...tatonka? for dinner."

"Minnetonka. Lots of great places out there." Elliot nodded. "Where did you eat?"

"Maynards." Veronica said. "It was gorgeous. We ate on the deck and stayed out there till the sun went down. Logan was drooling over the Cabin Cruisers."

"And I'm sure the cruisers were drooling over him." Elliot said.

"That's what _I _said!" Veronica nodded. "He didn't want to hear it."

"They never do."

"I love Excelsior." Marla said, declining to enter the discussion on who was drooling over what. "I have a friend who lives just off Water street. Her garage blew over in a storm a few years ago."

"How about that storm last night?" Veronica said, shaking her head. "There wasn't a cloud in the sky when we got home around 11:00, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking that my house was exploding and then this morning, I thought I'd dreamt the whole thing; blue skies from horizon to horizon!"

"Oh," Elliot said, sympathetically, "we have a word for that kind of weather phenomenon here in Minnesota; _normal."_

"So I should expect more of that?" Veronica laughed, picking up her menu. "What's good here?"

"Everything." Marla shrugged. "Although Elliot and I usually split a large grill salad."

"Yes," Elliot said. "We always fight over whether to get it with chicken, steak or sans meat. It depends on whether I'm having a vegetarian day."

"You have vegetarian days?" Veronica lifted an eyebrow.

"I try. But if God really hadn't wanted me to eat animals, He wouldn't have made them so delicious."

"I'll drink to that." Veronica decided on the Tennessee BBQ sandwich.

"So." Marla said, looking critically at Veronica after the waitress took their orders. "The house. How's it coming?"

"Well, I love it more every day. We've got a few pieces of furniture; enough to be able to use the place but here's the thing; I don't want to just go to some furniture store and buy rooms full of stuff. I want to take my time and only get things I really love but I have no idea where to start. We did find some gorgeous pieces at some antique stores. We bought a partner's desk for Logan to use in the library that's a work of art. I thought you might have some suggestions as to where I could look."

"Well, in additon to having some fabulous restaurants, Excelsior also has some great antique stores, if that's what you like." Elliot said. "Although, I must admit I'm surprised. I had you two pegged as contemporary, all the way."

"I don't think we're anything all the way." Veronica shrugged. "And while it would be easy to just hire someone, the very idea of allowing someone else to furnish my _home _just seems wrong."

"What?" Elliot gasped.

"Oh, calm down," Marla patted his arm. "She just means she wants to do it herself. It's a very personal thing."

"I don't have a problem with telling someone how many chairs I need or what colors I like but the idea of someone else filling my shelves with accessories, or choosing the art on the walls...it would be like living in a hotel and Logan already did that."

"Yes, he mentioned that." Marla said. "He lived in a hotel for how long?"

"Five years." Veronica said. "His parents...died and his house burned down when we were in high school, so-"

"Oh my God! How awful!" Elliot frowned.

"Mmmm." Veronica nodded. _Awful doesn't begin to describe it. _"The house he grew up in was decorated to the hilt. I don't know if a single thing in it meant anything to him at all. I want our place to be different. I want it to be...us."

"That's going to take time." Marla said. "For starters, you have to know what that even means."

"Yes." Elliot nodded sagely. "You could find out that you're all antique partner's desks and he's naugahyde recliners."

"I think it's a better bet that _he's _antique desks and _I'm _naugahyde." Veronica admitted.

"Darling, you couldn't be naugahyde if you tried." Elliot assured her. "You are hand-tanned calf skin or I'll start wearing loafers without socks."

"Clearly, you've never seen my Dad's apartment." Veronica chuckled.

"Miss Mars," Elliot said firmly "Anyone can tell that a rose growing in the middle of a weed patch is still a rose! Look at Marla, here; even sitting in this quitchy diner, she just screams 'Beauty Queen'."

"I'm not the one in this booth screaming 'queen', Elliot, so that's enough of that!" Marla said severely. She turned to Veronica "Estate sales. That's where you need to look."

"My dad bought me a ten dollar water bed at an estate sale once." Veronica cocked her head to one side. "Aren't they just glorified garage sales?"

Marla and Elliot looked at each other. "NO." they said in unison.

"A good estate sale is to a garage sale like a Broadway production is to a preschool sing along." Elliot said, seriously. "You can find absolutely _anything. _I've met so many-Well. Never mind."

"You really can find anything." Marla agreed. "The trick is knowing which neighborhoods are good for what. You did good coming to us, Mars. We know neighborhoods."

"I'll get us a newspaper," Elliot slid out of the booth.

"Different neighborhoods are good, depending on what you want." Marla explained. "If you want buried treasure and are willing to refinish, old blue collar neighborhoods like the Northeast side or the Nokomis areas are great. If you want ready to use, high quality furniture, Edina, Wayzata, Kenwood is where you need to go. If you want modern designer, I'd stick to Edina or Lake Minnetonka. Linden Hills, East Harriet, Uptown, all good for high quality, well taken care of, older stuff. Kitchen ware, stemware, barware; you can find that anywhere. A friend of mine just bought an entire china service for forty bucks only to look it up online and discover that she could get twenty bucks a plate for the same pattern.  
You said Logan's got a partners desk? Don't you find it exciting to think of who else may have used that peice? What papers may have been written there, what law cases settled? Aren't you fascinated by the history of old things?"

"I hadn't really given it a thought until right this moment," Veronica said, bringing her fist down on the table, "But Yes! Yes, I am!"

"Let's see what we've got this week," Elliot slipped back into the booth with a local paper, which he opened to the ads. "What day is it, Thursday? Perfect."

"Are there any in Kenwood, Lowry Hill, East Isles?" Marla asked, looking over his shoulder.

"Relax," Elliot said "I know what we're looking for. Get me a pen."

Marla sat back and raised her eyebrows at Veronica as she fished a marker out of her purse and handed it over.

"No, no no...yes, yes, no..." He circled three of the ads and handed Marla the page. "There you go."

"Yes..." she nodded, looking at the addresses he'd circled. "Edina; _Indian Hills, _good! Mount Curve and Linden Hills. This looks like as good a place to start as anywhere." she handed the paper to Veronica. "Sales usually go from Friday to Sunday, although not always. Most run at least two days and the rule of thumb is that large items like furniture, are half off on the second day. I know you don't need to look for those kinds of bargains, but believe me; it's more fun that way."

"Oh, the rush of getting an antique needlepoint chair for forty dollars because it's the second day is better than hitting your number at roulette!" Elliot nodded.

"I'm not really looking for exctiement, I just want stuff for my house."

"Do you think Mr. Mars would be interested in going with you?" Marla asked.

"Doubt it. He thought the house was done when he hooked up his game cube."

"These look like great sales and we only have the one open house this Saturday..." Marla looked hopefully at Elliot.

"Oh fine." he rolled his eyes. "I'll do all the prep but you're doing all the clean up."

"Deal!" she turned to Veronica. "Do you want to go Estate Saling with me on Saturday?"

"That sounds like fun." Veronica nodded.

"I'll pick you up at 9:00." Marla nodded. "And even if we don't find anything you want to buy, we get to root through some pretty amazing houses."

* * *

Despite the heat, JR trotted all the way to the restaurant and scanned the gathering crowd. The wind was too high for the sailing class to take the little boats out but the instructors had taken the kids down to the 32nd street beach to let them swim while also demonstrating the proper way to right a boat that had tipped.

JR looked around, knowing that Bryn would be there to pick up her brother. Just as he was beginning to worry that she wasn't going to show up, he caught sight of her, over by the sailing shack. After a momentary pang of uncertainty, he squared his shoulders and marched over to her, thinking of Logan throwing an entire Alterna-prom only to blow it with Veronica.

"She married him." JR muttered to himself. "After _everything, she married him. _I just want a date." He walked up to the shack and when he was a few feet from her, called out.

"Hey! Hi." He smiled nervously. She looked at him, one eyebrow raised in a silent question. Then recognition dawned and she smiled.

"Well, hello there!" she said. "Got a decent table for me today?"

"No, sorry." He looked back at the restaurant. "I actually just got here. I was wondering…um…would you like to have lunch with me?"

"You mean share a table?"

"No, I mean I'd like to buy you lunch. Just you this time, not all the kids. I mean, I'll buy them lunch but they've got to find their own table. Would...um... that be okay?"

"You don't have to buy them lunch, we're not a package deal." She said. "In fact, I think they want to keep on swimming for a while. It's really too hot to get out of the water, you know?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "Especially for a Selkie."

"Yeah!" she laughed. "Especially for them."

"Will they be okay on their own?" JR looked past her down the shore. The beach the kids were swimming at was a much prettier, shadier place than the large sunny beach off of which Logan surfed. The road on this side of the lake went up so the shore was protected from traffic by a tall, thickly wooded hill. The bike and pedestrian paths ran along the foot of the hill and a wide grassy expanse lay between the paths and the beach, which boasted its own playground. A few long stairways provided access to on street parking as there was no lot dedicated to this beach.

"They're fine. They can all swim. I'm just the driver, not the baby sitter." Bryn said. "In fact, a couple weeks ago I got so mad at Finnie I took off and he had to walk home."

"Oh. So you live nearby?"

"About two miles that way." She pointed across the lake. "He's a big boy. He can walk it. He doesn't _like _to walk it but he can. And now he knows that I don't bluff."

"You don't bluff." JR nodded seriously. "That's good to know."

"I'm Bryn," she said, offering her hand. "I'm sorry but I don't remember if you told me your name."

"Oh! It's Jeff." He said, briefly grasping her hand. "That's a really pretty name."

"Is it?"she teased.

"What? NO. Bryn is really pretty. The name, I mean."

"Oh. Thanks."

"I don't mean you're not pretty! I just…I don't want to freak you out by coming across way too strong, too soon, you know?"

"It's just lunch, right?" She asked as they walked toward the order window.

"Yes. I love you. Too much?"

She threw back her head and laughed but said "Yes! Way too much! You gotta save something for dinner. Do you really know what a Selkie is?"

"I didn't yesterday," he said, delighted that she'd mentioned dinner. "But I Googled it as soon as I got home. So, you're like, a mermaid, only a seal?"

"No, the black Irish are descended from fishermen who married Selkies but we, ourselves are not Selkies. I'm not crazy; I don't claim to turn into a seal in the water or at night or anything." She assured him as they took their place in line.

"Be kinda cool if you did." He cocked his head and looked at her, speculatively.

"Wouldn't it? I love that kind of folk lore. In fact, it's what I'm studying in school."

"Really. Where do you go?"

"The U. I'm getting my undergrad in folk lore and anthropology."

"Well, I'm sure that will be very useful in today's market."

"In today's market, it's at least as useful as a…" she looked him over critically. "A law degree?" she guessed.

"Nope." He shook his head. "The world hardly needs another lawyer."

"So are you still in school?"

"No, I graduated last spring. Criminology and Psychology."

"Oh, how cool! So, not a lawyer; a cop. Is that what you do?"

"Nope. I'm a professional lackey." he said, proudly.

"A what?"

"I've attached myself to a rich young man and he pays me to be at his beck and call." He explained. "It's pretty cool, actually; I never know what each day will bring. Last spring I spent three weeks as the advance man for his honeymoon; I was a few days ahead of them, hopping from Hawaii to Australia and back, making sure everything was as close to perfect as possible. That was fun! Today, he's having lunch with someone he claims is an old friend but whom I think I may have to investigate later. You'd be surprised how many people try to insinuate themselves into the lives of the super rich. One of my duties is to protect him from sycophants. It's quite demanding and requires all of my considerable resources."

"Seriously?" she asked, her dark brown eyes wide.

"No." he hung his head.

"What do you really do?"

"Oh, that_ is_ what I do. But it rarely requires all my resources, which honestly aren't even that considerable."

"You're a lackey?" she giggled.

"I actually prefer 'aide de camp'. Sounds more legit, doesn't it?"

"Much. What does an aide de camp do?"

"Mostly, I clean up after him. What are you planning to do with a degree in folk lore?"

"_And _anthropology. I could probably teach but the more I study, the more these ideas keep popping into my head," she said, becoming quite animated, "I'm thinking I'll try my hand at writing in the fantasy genre. I'll never make the New York Times bestseller list but at least I'll be having fun."

"That sounds great." JR nodded. "Fun is important."

"Your job seems to give you a lot of time off. Does your boss always give you a long lunch?"

"It's not that I get a lot of time off, it's just that a lot of my work _seems _like time off. For instance, yesterday was a working lunch. Procuring the best table in the place was my immediate assignment."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you remember the guy I was with?"

"No. I mean, I remember you were with someone but I didn't really notice him."

"You didn't?" JR was seriously surprised.

"No. Should I? Did he have a wooden leg or something?"

"No, it's just…never mind." JR had never met a girl who didn't notice Logan. He hadn't thought that one existed. "That was my boss."

"Really? And he told you to buy off my brother's table?"

"No, that was my idea. A good aide de camp never waits to be asked. _You really don't remember him at all_?"

"No. I'm sure there were dozens of guys here yesterday whom I don't recall. _You're _the guy I talked to. _You're _the guy who saved me a table, so you're the guy I remember."

"He's a fuckin' genius." JR mumbled.

"What?" Bryn asked but just then, the waitress called "Order up for JR!"

"That's us!" JR waved the woman over with their food. Just as she handed them their baskets, Finbar arrived from the beach.

"Hey, it's you!" he said, seeing JR. "You want me to get you a table?"

"All the tables are full," JR pointed out. "How would you do that?"

"Don't," Bryn shook her head but JR was curious.

"Easy!" Fin grinned. He turned away and wandered over to the nearest table, at which a couple were taking their time over the dregs of their lunch. Without saying a word, Fin stood at the edge of their table and began to hunch his shoulders and puff out his cheeks. Once he'd gotten the attention of the couple, he began to groan and make wretch-like noises.

"Oh, my God, are you okay?" the girl asked.

"Jeez, kid, get outta here!" the guy said, alarmed. At that moment, Fin hunched over the table, covered his mouth with one hand, made a horrible sound and let one long strand of drool drizzle from between his fingers to the table top.

"Ew! Gross! My Gawd!" the girl screamed, leaping up.

"Ugh! _Kid!"_ the guy jumped to his feet, grabbed the baskets holding the remains of their lunch and ran after his girl. Fin turned and gave a thumbs up to Bryn and JR with a huge grin on his face.

"I warned you." Bryn said, shaking her head but picking up the baskets and heading toward the open table.

"Impressive!" JR nodded to Finbar. "You remind me of someone I know. What's your last name?"

"Malloy." Fin said. "Why?"

"For a second there, I thought it might be 'Echolls'."

To be continued...


	11. Chapter 11 Memory Avenida

Chapter 11 Memory Avenida

Special Agent Horatio Waletski sat on the ratty bed in his dingy hotel room at the less than illustrious Camelot motel in Neptune California. He was going over his case notes, unable to believe the conclusion he was being forced to come to; Logan Echolls had been in and out of trouble for years; a thorn in the side of the Balboa County Sheriff's department, getting picked up for possession, vandalism, public drunkenness, disturbing the peace, underage drinking, destruction of public property and every other nuisance crime imaginable right up until the moment he was cleared of murder charges. After that, one instance of vandalism, which had been dropped by the very deputies whose windshield he had bashed in, was the only blemish on what could now be considered the record of a model citizen.

He chuckled, thinking of the story he'd gotten out of a Deputy Sacks regarding that little vandalism incident.

_FLASHBACK_

"_No, that kid hasn't been in here in years, not in cuffs, anyway. He spent every other weekend here when he was in high school but…maybe he just dint wanna go home." Sacks said, downing the fifth beer Wally had bought him at the dark little bar on the edge of town. "The last time he was in, I thought he'd lost his mind completely. It was right before the Holidays in '06. I 'member 'cuz it was the same day we nabbed the campus rapists. Boy that was bad, I'll tell you. I don't like to speak ill of the dead, but if Sheriff Mars had been in charge, we'da caught those scum bags like, a year sooner than it took ol' Lamb. Poor Don. He was a crap Sheriff but a good 'nuff guy. Nobody deserves to get cracked like that. Nobody. Not even a bad dog. Nobody."_

"_Echolls." Wally had prompted the tipsy deputy, who seemed prone to becoming a maudlin drunk, "You were gonna tell me about the last time Logan Echolls got himself arrested."_

"_Well see, that's just it." Sacks said, in wonder. "He really did GET hisself arrested. We had picked up these two muh-fuckers who had been druggin, rapin' and get this; SHAVIN' THE HEADS offa these poor girls-"_

"_Wait, What? " Wally sat up, sure that if there had been a rash of beheadings in California a few years ago, the FBI would have heard about it._

"_Nah, nah, not the heads off; the HAIR offa their heads. Left the poor li'l things all raped and bald. I can sorta see the rapin' part but where's the fun in humil…hum…embarrassin' those girls? Thas just mean. Mean, I tell ya."_

"_That is mean. I guess rapists aren't really known for their compassion, are they? What did Echolls have to do with the rapes?" Wally bought Sacks another beer._

"_Nothin! Nothin. 'Cept the last girl they attacked? They didn't rape her, they got caught before they could. That was V'ronca. Sheriff Mars girl. She's a good girl. I've known her since she was a li'l kid. Smart. Kinda scary."_

"_Good thing they got caught." Wally nodded sympathetically. He knew all about Veronica's part in the capture of more than one serial rapist and the first degree murder charges for the death of a Hearst Dean brought against one of them. He had thought that Veronica's untangling of the rapes and allotment of some of them to Mercer Hayes and others to Tim Foyle had been a brilliant bit of detective work. What he needed to know and was determined to get out of Sacks before the deputy passed out was what Logan's part had been._

"_Yep. Damn good thing." Sacks went on. "'Parently, that last one really pist Logan off. We put the two shits in holding. See, Echolls knows how things work around here; he was in ALLA TIME when he was a kid. 'Logan Echolls' was symbolonymous with 'trouble maker' back in the day. Shit, once he shared a cell WITH HIS OLD MAN. See, that was Lamb's sense of humor. Sick bastard. Mean, sick sonnabish. He's prolly rottin' in Hell with the meth head who killed him. Oh, I saw those tapes. Ol' man Echolls was guilty as SIN. He killed that girl. Hope he's in a worse Hell than ol' Lamb. Maybe Lamb's okay…stupid's not the same as bad, is it?" Sacks stopped, looking like he was about to cry._

"_How did Echolls get himself arrested?"_

"_Huh?" Sacks looked at Waletski as if he'd forgotten the other man was there. "Oh, yeah! Mornin' after we arrest the two shit cakes, Echolls finds hisself the nearest cop car and right in front a two deputies, goes Fred Flintsone on the front window with a Louisville slugger! Shattered that thing like it was a EGG. No reason." Sacks shook his head. Then he pointed at Wally. "So they haul his ass in and do EZACKLY what Echolls knew they'd do; toss him in holding. So there he is; locked in a cell with the two coskussers who been rapin' and shavin' girls and drugged 'Ronca. Hour later, not only do the dep'ties drop the charges, one of 'em said he thought Echolls oughta get a medal or somethin'. He shoulda, too. 'Cept we can't really give medals to guys who beat the shit outta rapists in jail 'cuz, you know; we're the Sheriff's depar'ment. Looks bad. Trial was even pos' poned 'cuz one a those turds was in the hopsital so long. Good thing he dint die; woulda been hard not to charge Echolls with murder one." _

"_Justifiable homicide?" Wally suggested._

"_Oh, hell yeh." Sacks burped. "Glad he dint die. Woulda been…prolembatic."_

_END OF FLASHBACK_

Wally looked at his notes and sighed. There were a few different ways to interpret the information he had in front of him. He began to write down his thoughts.

_Scenario A; Logan Echolls was a spoiled rotten brat desperately trying to get the attention of his parents and failing at every turn. All things considered, may have been for the best. Parents die within eighteen months of each other and the kid gives up the bad boy routine._

_Scenario B; Logan Echolls is a spoiled rotten brat who starts dating the former Sheriff's daughter. Bad behavior continues but loyalty to Keith Mars causes the department to circle the wagons around the rich little shit._

_Scenario C; Clichéd or not, the love of a good woman actually turns the psychotic jackass into a decent guy._

Wally looked at what he had written. The facts supported the first scenario and the third scenario didn't contradict the first. Logan Echoll's police record actually fit fairly neatly between the deaths of Lilly Kane and Aaron Echolls. It's possible that he was suffering a sort of post traumatic stress during those years. It didn't seem likely that the death of his father, whom he had testified _against,_ would have jolted Echolls out of the behavior, although stranger things have happened. More likely, it was the experience of being arrested and charged with the murder of Felix Toombs that scared the kid straight.

That seemed more realistic than a Sheriff's department deliberately covering up for someone. Even a department run by as slippery a character as Vinnie VanLowe. First of all, there didn't seem to be any reason to suspect collusion between Mars and VanLowe, who had run against each other in the special election. They had been competitors before the campaign as well. It seemed like a real stretch that VanLowe would cover up for Echolls just because he dated the daughter of the new Sheriff's former rival. Wally didn't doubt for a moment that Echolls could have bought off VanLowe but he couldn't find a shred of evidence in either of their financial records to support the theory.

And Wally knew from long years of experience that money only buys a certain kind of loyalty. No amount of money buys the concrete wall of silence that Wally had run up against over and over here in Neptune.

Sacks had been the only member of the Sheriff's department that he had been able to wring any useful information out of at all. Buying VanLowe drinks at the River Styx had netted him bupkis. The Sheriff seemed to get drunk but not one injudicious word passed his drooling lips. Wally had tried repeatedly to get him to talk about famous folks he'd incarcerated but VanLowe seemed to deliberately steer clear of talking about Logan. When Wally had asked him point blank, the Sheriff had simply said that Aaron Echolls was dead long before he'd become Sheriff.

D'Amato, the deputy who had once been fired over the fiasco of the Kane/Echolls sex tapes disappearance, had seemed a likely source but had given Wally nothing more than a cold stare and the back of his head.

The only employees at the Neptune Grand who were susceptible to bribes had nothing first hand to say about their most famous long term guest. Turns out, Mr. Echolls had been careful about who he allowed near him even in those days. Reggie, the head of security, said his job was to protect the privacy of all the Grand's guests and the only staff employee Mr. Echolls let anywhere near him, one Jeff Ratner, no longer worked for the hotel and in fact, after graduating from Hearst, had left Neptune. During his five year stay, Logan had managed to turn the Penthouse Suite into a very private domain.

Posing as a reporter, Wally asked the girl at the front desk how unusual that was. "Guy that paranoid's gotta be hiding something, right?" he suggested.

"Well, you can thank one of your own for that," Tina said, her cheerful, friendly manner disappearing the moment he said he was a reporter. "Logan wised up after one of you actually masqueraded as his long lost brother to get close to him. I don't think it's paranoia when they really are out to get you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do."

That was the most he got out of the Neptune Grand.

* * *

Another avenue that Wally had pursued had been at Hearst College. He looked up transcripts and financial records. He stalked professors and Deans. Those academic types could drink like nobody's business but not one of them had anything but praise for their former student. Apparently, when he bothered to show up, he had been a charming addition to the classroom. It crossed Wally's mind that none of them wanted to risk alienating an extremely wealthy alumnus, thereby jeopardizing future donations to the school, but some of the praises sung in his ears seemed too much for such a mundane explanation. A Professor Corrigan in particular, had downed half a bottle of single malt scotch and with each shot had been more effusive in his praise of young Mr. Echolls.

"He may be a bad ass, but he's a good judge of it!" Corrigan had cryptically cackled.

"He didn't get in any trouble at school? No problem with authority figures? Cheating? Fighting?"

"What, that thing in the spring of his freshman year?" Corrigan asked, waving a hand dismissively. "That was nothing. Yes, there were rumors that he'd broken into the sound booth of the campus radio station and gotten into a dust up with one of the on air personalities, but Mr. Piznarski laughed it off. Then there was the incident in the food court but again; school authorities couldn't find a single witness. The alleged victim never even filed a complaint. I don't think it ever happened. True, Mr. Sorokin didn't return to Hearst but his family insisted it had nothing to do with Mr. Echolls."

A bribe to a custodian secured the possession of digital archives of student broadcasts from the spring of '07. After many hours of listening, Wally finally heard Stosh 'Piz' Piznarski talking about the conundrum of Purgatory one evening, when there was a loud crash on the tape, some muffled thumping and then nothing for the remainder of his broadcast hour. Wally felt he'd finally hit pay dirt.

He traced Piznarski to a radio station in Golden, Colorado, where the young man had landed a job as a late night DJ. Wally called, pretending to be a journalist doing a piece on the difficulties of getting started in radio in the age of Limbaugh and Beck. He asked Piznarski if he had any interesting stories about being a campus radio jock. He asked what was the weirdest broadcast he'd ever done? What was the biggest surprise Piz had ever experienced in the booth? He asked the question a dozen ways but Piz wouldn't bite. Wally finally came right out and asked "You were at school with Logan Echolls. You ever talk about him on air?"

"No, man!" Piz had scoffed. "I don't use my friends to further my career."

"So, you consider him a friend?" Wally had pressed. There was a pause on the line.

"Is this interview about me," Piz finally asked. "Or am I just someone to pump for information on Logan?"

Before Wally could answer, Piz continued, "You know, you vultures make me sick. So the guy's Dad was a psycho! He shouldn't have to spend the rest of his life apologizing for who his father was. He's just trying to live his life now, and you _whores_ won't leave him alone. None of you are interested in the real story of Logan Echolls and you wouldn't believe it if you ever heard it, which you never will because it's _none of your GOD DAMNED BUSINESS_. You just want to perpetuate the myth of the Hollywood brat. Go pick on Lindsey Lohan, she at least seems to enjoy it! You people are the reason American newspapers are dying! You give journalism a bad name! You know, most people now consider you guys to be less trustworthy than used car salesmen or ambulance chasers? That's right, and it's all because of shit heels like you! WHY DON'T YOU GET A REAL JOB?"

At that point, Piz had hung up on him and Wally knew he'd hit another dead end. On the other hand, he thought the kid had a bright future in radio.

* * *

Finally, just to be thorough, Wally had spent an evening at a Biker bar out on the PCH. He knew of the bad blood between Echolls and the local hoods, due to the old murder charges. Someone else had been made for the death of Felix Toombs but bad feelings like those engendered by the murder of a fellow gang member toward a privileged white boy were unlikely to go away entirely. Wally knew the opinion of such gang bangers wasn't worth much but he wanted to hear what they had to say. He was dying to get the local criminal element's take on Mr. Logan Echolls.

He couldn't find a single person who would talk about Logan at all. The only lead to come out of a fruitless evening was a name he overheard.

"Shut your mouth!"One biker snapped at a younger man. "You know Weevil says no one talks about Echolls. Not ever!"

Weevil. It took Wally most of a day to track down the owner of the nickname to Eli Navarro, former leader of the PCHers. Looking over Weevil's sheet, Wally let himself hope for a moment.

According to prison records, Eli Navarro, a high school class mate of Echolls, had a tattoo on his left clavicle that said "Lilly". Lilly Kane had been Logan Echolls girl. That could have been a source of friction.

High school records showed that Navarro had been briefly expelled after serving detention with Echolls. No bad blood? But wait; not only had Navarro been reinstated, both boys names had been credited to a prank that was now a Pirate legend. Wally shook his head. It didn't make sense.

Navarro had even done his prison time in a case connected to the murder of Felix Toombs, a crime for which Logan Echolls had been the prime suspect for most of a year.

Navarro had worked as a custodian at Hearst College during the time of the alleged fist fights on campus in the spring of Echolls freshman year. Fights were messy. Someone had to clean up after them.

Wally was feeling better and better about his evening at the road house.

Then he got to the end of Eli 'Weevil' Navarro's sheet.

_Currently employed as an apprentice P.I with Keith Mars Investigations._

_Fuck._

Wally felt his head crack against the concrete wall, again.

"What the hell." He had shrugged and gone looking for Eli Navarro.

* * *

He found him right where he'd expected; in the outer office of Mars Investigations. Wally had timed his entrance for a few minutes after he saw Keith Mars drive off. He went in, pretending to be a potential client.

"…my boss is sure his wife is cheatin'." He told Navarro, who was listening intently. "He doesn't care about the infidelity so much as that the prick she's bangin' might be a pigeon worth pluckin', you get me? The cock sucker's from Neptune. My boss sent me to find out whatever I can about the guy. I figured you local guys could get me the full scoop; his history, habits and financials while I work on gettin' a money shot of him banging the wife."

"That's what we do." Eli nodded, taking notes. "So who's the mark?"

"Name of Logan Echolls. I don't have a photo."

At the mention of Echolls name, Navarro closed his eyes briefly, sat back in his chair, a strange little smile on his face.

_FLASHBACK _

_Weevil knocked on the door of the Penthouse Suite. He shook his head, still unable to believe his errand. After a moment or two, the door opened._

"_Logan," Weevil nodded civilly._

"_Weevs! What harbinger of the Apocalypse brings you to my door? Wait. Is this it?" _

"_May I come in?" _

_Logan stood aside. As Weevil walked into the room, he said "You understand; I'll have to have you searched before you leave."_

"_Funny." Weevil smiled sourly. Logan swung the door shut and walked into the living room._

"_Seriously, dude; what do you want?"_

"_My Grandma died a few weeks ago."_

"_Yeah, I was sorry to hear it."_

"_You weren't at the funeral."_

"_I didn't think the family would appreciate my presence." Logan dropped onto the couch. Weevil stood in the middle of the room._

"_You're probably right," he nodded. "but seeing as you two were so chummy, I kind of expected you there." _

"_I have no idea what you're talking about." Logan blew out his cheeks in a show of bored exasperation._

"_Why didn't you tell me?"_

"_Rewind to ten seconds ago…hit play."_

"_My Grandma didn't have much so it's not like she had a big will or anything but she did leave instructions for certain things that she wanted people to have. Jewelry and stuff."_

"_Thank God. I'd hate to think of the barrio erupting in violence over the macaroni necklace."_

"_You mean the one you made her?" Weevil raised an eyebrow as Logan looked at him in mild surprise._

"_I was six." Logan shrugged. "Even at that age I knew my mother wouldn't want it. Did she will it back to me or is it now a Navarro family heirloom?"_

"_She was buried in it."_

_That got the reaction Weevil hoped it would; for a moment, just a moment, the mask of the smart ass fell away and Weevil knew he was seeing the kid his grandmother had loved. It was only an instant but it was enough for Weevil to know that that kid existed; that he was real._

"_I suppose it was the nicest thing she owned?" Logan smirked, the mask firmly back in place._

"_She was buried in a pewter bracelet I made for her my first year in shop, the silver brooch Chardo gave her…"_

"_Which__ he bought with the stolen credit card that cost your grandma her job."_

"…_and the necklace you gave her. In her instructions, she said she wanted to be buried in the jewelry her boys made her. She considered you one of her own."_

_Logan looked over his shoulder out the glass doors to the balcony and the sky beyond. Then he turned back to Weevil and nodded._

"_I always hated you for that." Weevil shook his head and smiled._

"_Oh, you hated me for a lot more than that."_

"_Yeah. There was always so much to choose from." Weevil nodded, his grin widening "But that was enough. You were the rich white boy whose house she cleaned and whose ass she kissed. You had everything anyone could possibly want and all I ever had was my grandma. Why in the hell did I have to share her with you?"_

"_Is that why you went after Lilly?" Logan asked quietly._

"_NO, are you nuts?" Weevil laughed. "I never went after Lilly! Lilly came after me."_

_Logan nodded once, as though he had no trouble believing that Lilly had been the aggressor._

"_And that had nothing to do with you. At least, not on my end." Weevil continued. "I loved her. Or, I could have. You never crossed my mind when I was with Lilly. But when she kept going back to you, it was one more reason to hate your white ass."_

"_So...what? You decided to punish me by coming over here and dragging me down Memory Avenida with you? Sorry; I don't know how to say 'lane' in migrant worker."_

"_Yeah, you can insult me all you want, it ain't gonna do you no good. I came here because _I know you now_. How come you never told me?"_

"_Remember back a few minutes ago, when I had no idea what you were talking about? We're there again."_

"_How much was the monthly rent my Grandma paid you?" Weevil demanded._

"_That's none of your business."_

"_I just spent the last couple a weeks cleaning up her accounts. You never charged her a dime! How come you never told me?"_

"_Because it was NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS."_

"_She was MY Grandma!"_

"_It's MY house!"_

"_For three years it's been gnawing at my guts that you held the power of eviction over her head; that any wrong move, a late payment, too many maintenance requests, whatever! And you'd throw her out on the street! Hell, so many times I wanted to get in your face and I didn't because I was afraid you'd retaliate against her and now, NOW I find out you were supporting her? That was MY JOB."_

"_Oh spare me the Latin American macho bullshit and go take care of your nieces and nephews. Frankly, the amount of rent I could've collected on that roach trap wasn't worth the paper work to draw up a lease agreement."_

"_It's not the money, it's –"_

"_Did it ever occur to you that maybe Letty paid with currency besides money?" Logan raised an eyebrow and smirked lasciviously. _

"_I know she did! That's why I'm here." Weevil reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope, which he held toward Logan, who crossed his arms and glared back at him. _

"_The deal your grandma and I had was between us." He snapped. "You got a problem with it, take it up with her."_

"_Take it." Weevil grinned, still holding out the envelope. "It's not what you think."_

_Reluctantly, Logan snatched the envelope out of Weevil's hand. Still glaring, he ran a finger under the flap and reaching inside, frowned. He looked down at it as he drew out an old, yellowed card. When he realized what it was, he started to laugh, pressed the card against his heart and looked up at Weevil._

"_I will treasure this to the end of my days." He said, seriously._

"_You better!" Weevil laughed. "My Grandma made the best chocolate chip cookies in the world."_

"_That she did." Logan nodded, tucking the recipe card into his shirt pocket. He sighed, then stood and walked over to the bar. "Let's drink a toast to the passing of Letitia Nevarro. Tequila?"_

"_I'd prefer the Glenlivet, if you don't mind." Weevil said._

"_Oh. A man after my own heart." Logan cocked one eyebrow. "You'll like this." He reached for a small square bottle of Cardhu._

_Twenty minutes later the two of them were sitting on the balcony, drinking whiskey, smoking the cigars Logan had dug out of his humidor and reminiscing about Grandma Letty._

"_She would never let us bad mouth you in the house," Weevil said, blowing a smoke ring into the sky. "I thought it was from fear that word would get back to you and you'd throw her out. Now, I find out it's because she owed you."_

"_I owed her, you dumb ass," Logan said around the end of his stogie. "I'd have given her back her job if you hadn't burned my house down. Asshole."_

"_That fire was an accident!" Weevil batted his eyes, innocently._

"_Right." Logan snorted. " Insurance doesn't pay out on arson. So it was a win-win. Except for the part about me being homeless."_

"_Cry me a river." Weevil said, holding up a thumb and forefinger to play the world's tiniest violin. Then he looked over his shoulder back into the suite. "Although, this place does suck."_

_Just then, Logan's phone rang. He pulled it out and seeing who it was, answered._

"_Hey, there, Sugarpuss! Oh, just sitting on the balcony sharing a snort and a smoke with Eli, toasting the late, great Letitia Navarro… Yes, really… That's what _I _said! Yep… Okay… See you later." He ended the call and pocketed the phone._

"_Veronica wanted to know if Death and Pestilence were on their way over." he said, taking a long draw off his cigar._

"_I guess that makes you War and me Famine." Weevil nodded. "That sounds about right." Then he took the cigar out of his mouth and peered at Logan. "Although V wages a decent war, herself. You have no idea what she risked for you."_

"_What do you know about it?" Logan asked._

"_She's the only person who ever got away with punching me in the face."_

"_Good for her." Logan chuckled._ "_When did this happen?"_

"_When that Ruskie nabbed you," Weevil said, "She asked for my help and I said she was better off without you. Punched me right in the face. That girl was crazy."_

"_Yeah, I've seen Veronica bat shit crazy. You're lucky she wasn't holding a tire iron."_

"_Was I?" Weevil raised an eyebrow. "I've wondered about it for years but I guess V always knew, didn't she?"_

_"Probably. Knew what?"_

_"That underneath that jackass's exterior you work so hard to cultivate, you're actually a decent guy."_

_"How dare you. I've killed men for less."_

"_Right." It was Weevil's turn to snort. _

"_Bet I could toss you over that railing and convince everyone you jumped."_

"_You're all talk, Echolls."_

"_I hate to repeat myself, but as I told you once before; NEVER underestimate the size of my cojones."_

"_I remember." Weevil chuckled._

"_Your Grandma was a helluva woman." Logan sighed and tossed back the rest of his scotch . "There was a name she used to call me. I never asked her what it meant. Every night, when she went home she'd say to me, 'Buenas nochas, Tekerro."_

"_Te Quiero?" Weevil asked._

"_Yeah, that's it."_

"_It means 'I love you' you fuckin' idiot." Weevil took another sip of his own drink._

_Logan took a long drag on his cigar._

"_Your grandma called me a fuckin' idiot every night?" he finally asked._

"_Yup." Weevil nodded._

_END OF FLASHBACK_

Eli Navarro opened his eyes and looked at Wally. "You're a lying shit bag," he smiled. "We don't take lying shit bags on as clients. There's the door."

Wally sighed. His head was really starting to hurt.

* * *

An hour later, he sat at the bar in the Neptune Grand, his bag in the trunk of the rental car, having dinner and a drink before catching the red eye back to Minneapolis. A couple of young women came and sat at the bar a few stools down from him. One was a pretty brunette and the other an overblown blond whose large, unfettered bosom couldn't help but catch his eye.

"I don't know why we always have to come here." Said the brunette. "He's long gone."

"Shut up." the blond said. "it's still the best place in town. God, where is that bartender?"

Wally watched the pair of them as they ordered drinks. Cosmos. Is that all the Sex in the City generation ever drank? Did they have no imagination at all? He peered at the pair of them. He had initially thought they were about thirty but on closer inspection saw that they were much younger. Early twenties. He pulled out his cell and checked the time. He still had an hour to kill before heading to the airport. The brunette slipped off her stool and sashayed toward the ladies room. Watching her go, he had a hunch.

He stared at the blond and as she scanned the room, she caught him staring.

"What the hell do you want?" she asked.

"Do you know Logan Echolls?" he blurted.

"Who wants to know?" she demanded.

"Enquiring minds." Wally smiled.

"Really?" She smiled the most calculating smile Wally had ever seen. "Buy me a drink and I'll tell you all you want to know about Logan Echolls. We were lovers."

"Oh, so you know him well." Wally grinned, sliding onto the stool beside her. He couldn't believe his luck.

"He chased after me all through high school. But I was dating his best friend. He dated my best friend for years. Then she died. You remember; Lilly Kane? The local slut accused his dad of the murder but Aaron was acquitted, of course. Like anyone would believe a guy that hot would kill someone. Truth is; I think she went after Logan's dad because Logan dated her for like, three minutes and then dumped her pasty ass. Her dad was the sheriff when Lilly died and he went after Jake Kane after _Duncan_ dumped her. I swear, for a couple of years there, the most dangerous thing a guy could do here in Neptune was have a son who dumped Veronica Mars. Dick only made out with her and his dad went to prison... She's probably the one who told them to go after Logan when Felix Toombs was murdered. That slut was crazy. I'm so glad she's gone. Anyway. Logan and I didn't hook up til we got to college. He was sweet but the last thing I wanted was to end up with someone from Neptune. It's a big world out there, you know?"

The brunette had returned from the ladies room by then. She raised an eyebrow but didn't look terribly surprised to find her friend in conversation with a strange man. Wally had a feeling that this was not a rare occurrence.

"Shelly knows Logan, too." The blond said. "Shelly, this guy works for the Enquirer."

"Hi. Doing another story on the Scandal of the Decade? God, I wish Mel Gibson would just kill someone so things could go back to normal around here."

"So you knew Logan in high school, too?" Wally asked Shelly.

"Yeah. He was always nice to me." She shrugged.

"Did you date him, too?" Wally asked.

"'Dating' is hardly what Logan was into in those days. No, I…wait a minute." she looked at the blond, skeptically. "Madison, you never _dated _Logan!"

"Fine; I'm being delicate." Wally explained.

"We never _slept_ with Logan, either." Shelly shook her head.

"Madison here says they were lovers." Wally nodded at the blond, who was looking daggers at Shelly.

"What?" Shelly demanded of Madison. "When?"

"Aspen?" Madison made the word sound like it had three syllables. "I told you about it!"

"Christmas vacation, freshman year?" Shelly demanded.

"Uh, _yeah." _Madison said. "He was _all over me!"_

"He was so drunk he couldn't stand!" Shelly said. "You told me he passed out the second he got to your room."

"Well maybe we did it when he woke up." Madison spat. "did you ever think of that?"

"I think we come to this stupid bar every damn week because he's the one that got away! You've spent the last four years trying to get another shot with him because you can't stand the fact that he couldn't get it up for you. And not wearing panties when we go out is a sign of desperation. That's what _I_ think! "

"God, you really are _a bitch_, aren't you?"

At that point, Wally sighed and tossed a twenty on the bar. "Enjoy your drinks, ladies." He said, using the word loosely, then stood and headed for the parking lot as the two women hissed and spat at each other at the bar.

He tossed a handful of change in the tin can next to the homeless guy asleep near the parking lot fence because he liked the guy's sign.

On a piece of cardboard, scrawled in black crayon, it read "My name is Dom and I exist."

To be continued...


	12. Chapter 12 Dog Days of August

Chapter 12 Dog Days of Summer

Veronica parked her car in the garage and walked across the lawn. She was grateful that their property was surrounded by tall trees; the shade was a blessing in the heat, the temperature being well into the nineties again. The breeze should have been comforting but the humidity made it feel as though she were walking through the breath of a dragon. Opening the back door and entering the air conditioned kitchen was as refreshing as jumping into a pool.

"Honey, I'm home!" she called as she dropped her bag on the counter and removed her gun. She could hear the boys playing video games in the living room. She opened the fridge and took a large swig out of the cold water carafe before she walked around the corner and sure enough, there they were; blasting the hell out of something.

"…I get it," JR was saying. "There's no way in the world he's gonna tell anyone you're here."

"No. The press is way more interested in him than me; he's A-list. I'm just a freak show."

"I wouldn't call him A-list." JR snorted. "So are you gonna start hanging out with him now?"

"Nah, we were friendly but never really friends. Besides, he's going back to LA next week. Some movie about a lost dog. Spock's in it."

"Leonard Nimoy?"

"No, the new- Hey, Sweet Cheeks!" Logan caught sight of Veronica.

"Not 'sweet cheeks'," she admonished.

"Sugar Britches?" he offered.

"I really prefer 'Hot Stuff' in front of the help." She smiled at JR. "Did you guys even get off the couch, today? Cuz I'm pretty sure this is where I left you."

"Of course we did!" Logan hit the off button and dropped his controller.

"I was winning." JR complained but Logan was already off the couch, kissing Veronica. He spun around and pulled her toward the basement stairs, saying "The ring's in. Wait til you see it; it's awesome!"

"Thirty Days of Night _sucked_!" JR said, putting the controllers away.

"What?" Veronica looked back at JR as Logan pulled her toward the basement.

"It was a vampire movie, it was supposed to suck." Logan threw back over his shoulder, never breaking his stride. "Look at this!"

"Whoa." Veronica stopped at the bottom of the basement stairs in surprise. At the far end of the large family room now stood a boxing ring, complete with ropes and turn buckles. A large rack against the wall held sparring pads, boxing gloves, helmets and athletic tape. A heavy bag hung in one corner, a speed bag in the other, yet there was still plenty of space in the room.

"I thought it would be bigger." She said, following Logan across the room.

"It's huge!" Logan said. "You can't tell because this room is enormous. Come on!" he ducked between the ropes into the ring, where he began bouncing on his toes and shadow boxing. Veronica laughed when he pantomimed getting hit in the stomach and then the face. He staggered backward toward the turnbuckle.

"Come on, Logie!" she yelled, doing her best Burgess Meredith. "Hit 'im back! He's nuthin' but a bum, a BUM I tell ya!"

Logan shook imaginary sweat out of his eyes and advanced into the middle of the ring again, throwing jabs right and left. He got hit again, fell to one knee, pulled himself upright and threw a slow motion round house, pretended to pull a gun and fire off several rounds, then threw both arms over his head and yelled "Yo, Ronica! I did it!"

"You should hook it up so that the Rocky theme plays every time you step in the ring." She laughed.

"I was thinking the theme to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." Logan jumped down from the ring. He threw an arm around her and ruffled her hair with his free hand, which she batted away, giggling. "When we're done, we'll figure out where to put that sewing room you wanted. We'll put some weight machines over here," he turned her toward one wall, then another, saying "... and the free weights over there…" he showed her how he planned to lay out the gym equipment. "Do you think you'd want mirrors on the wall, for… I don't know. Whatever?"

"I don't want to watch myself sweat." Veronica shook her head. "If you do, go for it."

"Treadmill can go right there and we'll mount a tv up there." Logan waved at the wall. "We'll have to get some floor matting but I'd just as soon skip mirrors. JR's hired a former national kick boxing champ to come and give us lessons."

"Really?" Veronica tilted her head at him. "Are you guys preparing for some kind of cage match competition or something?"

"I just thought it would be fun." Logan shrugged. "You'll benefit from the self defense training, as well."

"Wait. _I'm _gonna be learning to kick box?" she asked, her eyebrows shooting up. "I don't want to do that."

"You want to be a field agent, right? Don't you think some form of martial arts and self defense will come in handy?"

"I think my gun will come in handy."

"I'll let you kick me."

"Oh, then I'm in."

"So what do you think? Pretty cool, huh?"

She smiled at him. He looked as excited as a little kid with a new bike. "It's pretty cool." she agreed. "But are you seriously going to make Jeff get into that ring with you? You'll kill him."

"We got pads." he indicated the protective gear piled on the rack. "He'll be fine. In fact, he can't wait; he's convinced that after a few lessons he'll knock me flat."

"I will never understand boys." she shook her head and started back up the stairs.

* * *

Upstairs, JR was in the kitchen, preparing dinner. He had a tray of seasoned chicken breasts, a bowl of fresh fruit and vegetable chunks, and a small jar of home made pepper sauce. He spooned a small amount of the sauce into a pan and turned it on low. Then, he put another dollop of it in a large skillet and turned on the heat for the chicken.

Veronica and Logan had returned from checking out the emerging home gym and were back in the living room.

"That's not the only thing we accomplished this afternoon," Logan said, picking up a new remote control off the couch.

"By 'we', I assume you mean 'Jeff'?"

Ignoring her, he pointed it at the windows and Veronica's mouth fell open as the new set of sheer drapes slowly closed across the front windows, creating a gossamer thin yet opaque film between them and the parkway. He turned and locked eyes with her.

Just then, JR came into the room from the kitchen, carrying two glasses of white wine. "I'm making Emeril's Piri piri chicken with jicama orange salad," he said. "It's easy, delicious and virtually fat free. It doesn't take very long, so enjoy your wine and I'll have dinner ready for you in no time."

"Jeff." Veronica said, staring at Logan.

"Mars?" JR set the two glasses on the coffee table and turned to her.

"Go home." she said.

He looked at her for a moment, glanced at Logan who was staring at his wife, then at the closed window sheers. He actually felt himself blushing. Turning on his heel, he went back to the kitchen, where he turned off the heat under everything and put the chicken and the salad back in the fridge before heading out the back door to his apartment.

* * *

Friday dawned too hot and sticky for breakfast on the patio. Veronica left Logan reading the papers barefoot in the kitchen and went off to work where she spent her time investigating backgrounds and avoiding any unnecessary interaction with Agent Blythe.

"You abandoned me yesterday," Tuski teased. "I almost had to have lunch all alone."

"Poor Tuski," Veronica put a faux-sympathetic face on. "Whatever did you do without me?"

"Made Shep buy me lunch."

"Clever girl!"

"It was fun and informative, as always." Tuski smiled.

_FLASHBACK_

_"Hey, Good lookin'," Shep grabbed the chair from Veronica's cubicle and pulled it over next to Tuski. "Whatcha doing down here all alone at lunch time? Shouldn't you be out beautifying the environment by walking around in it?"_

_"What's up, Shep?" Tuski closed the file she was working on._

_"I thought I'd take you to lunch." _

_"You're on."_

_"Great." he looked around the mostly deserted bullpen. "Wait a sec, there's something I want to show you. Remember the other day when Mars was giving us the skinny on all the shit that went down when she was in school?" he moved around Stephanie and put his hands on her keyboard over her shoulder. "I knew there was more about that Echolls kid but I couldn't remember."_

_"So you checked?" Tuski liked having Shep leaning over her, all intent and business like._

_"I can't believe you didn't. We're supposed to put the 'I' in FBI, aren't we?"_

_"Natural curiosity is a job requirement," she nodded. "But when background checks are your meat and potatoes, it's not how you want to spend your free time."_

_"Didn't take more than a few seconds; we're not talking state's secrets here. Check it out;" he had simply gone to Youtube and typed in 'Tinsel Town Diaries'/ Aaron Echolls._

_"Damn." Tuski sighed, shaking her head as the image of Aaron Echolls filled her screen. "Psycho was a good looking bastard."_

_"Probably how he got away with it for so long."_

_"Yeah! Kid sure didn't inherit his Dad's looks." Tuski looked at the family portrait on the screen; beautiful parents, a glowing Trina and a smirking Logan. "He seems uncomfortable."_

_"What do you expect? He's a teenager in a tux. He's probably stoned. Here; this is the part..." they watched silently as the narrator of the piece described Logan's high school career as a bum-fight promoter._

_"Bum fights!" Shep laughed as the narration ended. "Kid's an entrepreneur!"_

_"That's...I don't even know what that is." Tuski shook her head. "Mean? Cruel?"_

_"Nah, just stupid." Shep said. She looked at him. "What? It's not like he forced them to fight. He offered 'em money. They're not animals;__ they had a choice."_

_"Did they?"Tuski looked skeptical._

_"Have a little respect for our homeless brethren. There's always a choice," Shep nodded. "It's not like none of 'em fight _without_ a monetary incentive."_

_"You're actually sticking up for this?" she pointed at the screen, which now showed the amateur footage of the fight on the beach._

_"No, I'm just saying it could be worse. They're just boxing; it's not like he gave them clubs or knives or anything. It could be a lot more vicious. Think Michael Vick; dog fights. Cock fights, bull fights. Could be a LOT worse."_

_"I do not understand you men." Tuski shook her head._

_"And there's this, I found, too." Shep leaned back over the keyboard and clicked on a related video. In a moment, the soup kitchen press conference was playing for them; Aaron and Logan Echolls in an apron, the boy apologizing for his behavior._

_"Kid _definitely _didn't get his dad's looks," __Tuski said, watching the two Echolls side by side. She frowned as they watched Logan hug his dad and tell him he loved him. "I thought Mars said he hated his dad."_

_"Wait for it. Kid's a better actor than his old man. __This part!" Shep said, pointing at the monitor. "Watch Aaron's face!"_

_They watched Aaron's expression as Logan told the world his dad was planning to donate a half million dollars to the local food shelf._

_"Oh, my God!" Tuski gasped. "He did NOT see that coming!"_

_Shep hit the pause button, the capture showing Logan smiling at the camera and Aaron, a false smile on his lips, rage in the look he focused on his son._

_"Mars said Aaron beat him." Tuski looked at the screen in distaste. "I hate to think what happened to that boy when he got him home."_

_"Yeah," Shep nodded. "Kid had to know the price he'd pay for that little prank. __We could use this as a training video; it all looks so benign and nice until you know the back story, then you start to pick up subtext and undertones in every look and word. It's fascinating!"_

_"I'll say!" Tuski nodded. A moment ago, Aaron had looked ruggedly handsome to her. Now, glaring at his son, he looked sinister and cruel...ugly. "If you just watched this cold, you'd think 'okay; dumb kid, good dad, making amends; happy ending'. In the context Mars gave us it looks...different. Now __I see anger, manipulation and the threat of severe retribution. According to Mars, he slept with his son's girl friend, bashed her brains in, got away with it and then bragged about it. That was one dangerous guy." _

_"Look at that." Shep said, indicating Logan's smile. "I'd rather go toe to toe with the Dad than mess with that kid."_

_Tuski looked at him, a crease between her eyes. "You'd take that kid apart with your bare hands."_

_"No," Shep shook his head. "I'd never see him coming."_

_"Aaron sure didn't." Tuski looked back at the faces on the screen and sighed, "One big happy family." They looked at each other._

_"I knew there was more about that kid." Shep shrugged. "Bum fights."_

_"Did his old man ever donate the money?" Tuski asked. _

_"_Now_ you're thinking like an FBI agent!" Shep said, approvingly, as he attacked the keyboard again._

_END OF FLASHBACK_

"Where did you run off to?" Tuski asked Veronica.

"I met my realtor for lunch," Veronica said. "I just had some questions I thought she was a good person to ask and I was right."

"Trouble with your house?"

"No. But she's going to take me to some estate sales tomorrow."

"I love estate sales!" Tuski beamed. "Can I come?"

"Uh...sure. We're starting at 9:00 a.m."

"Oh. Never mind. Saturday is my sleep til noon day. And I have a date tonight!"

"Rock on, girl! With a certain tall dark G-man?"

"Don't say that. Yes. I have decided to roll the dice and step with Shep."

"I'll never say 'rock on' again if you never repeat another Sheppism."

"Deal."

* * *

Later that afternoon, Veronica, Tuski and a handful of other young agents were summoned out of the bullpen to a meeting in Blythe's office.

"You've all done an exeptional job." Blythe told them. "Now we need you to go further in depth with these files. We're looking particularly into social networks and financial records. We need to know where these folks do their grocery shopping, who they've donated money to and how much they give to their respective churches, and who runs those organizations. Go deep. Follow the money. Get to work."

They were each handed a small stack of files and sent back to their desks.

"I've already checked these people," Veronica said, looking through the names on her files.

"Me too." Tuski said. "I guess we found something."

"Is it too much to ask what?" Veronica mused.

"Oh, I'm sure they'll tell us when we need to know." Tuski said. "Won't they?"

Veronica was beginning to wonder.

* * *

Logan skipped surfing that morning and had gotten his bike out instead. He took the trail between Cedar Lake and Isles, towards downtown. For a few miles, the trail wound through woods and fields. Only the rooftops glimpsed through the trees reminded him that he was still in the city until he came out of the woods and the trail suddenly paralleled a highway, high over head. For a while, the path lead in and out of wooded areas beneath the freeway.

He followed the path through downtown, to the Mississippi, down the river road to the falls and up the parkway to the chain of lakes and finally back home. He was starving but energized by the time he hung his bike in the garage, several hours later. JR brought him a sandwich in the library, where he immediately went to work.

After about an hour, he emailed Keith back in Neptune. A minute later, his cell rang.

"Mars." he said, picking up.

"I think that's my line." his father in law said.

"Hey, Sheriff, I just sent you an email!"

"I know, that's why I called. Do you want the whole file, or just my summary?"

"I kinda need all of it, if that's okay. I'm trying to plot the case from beginning to end, so..."

"That's fine. I'll have Eli run a copy. It'll have to be heavily redacted, of course."

"I know. That's no problem; I don't need to know names, dates or addresses for this. Those details are just distractions."

"How's it going, anyway? I haven't heard anything and I was starting to worry."

"It's going. It's actually...I think I can do this! I just need more info to finish the outline. The rest of it seems to come pretty easy to me. After all, I've been a liar my whole life."

"Are you referencing Twain, now?" Keith was constantly surprised by his son in law.

"Very good, Sheriff. I thought for sure you'd credit Buffett."

"I'm not completely illiterate, you know. I read a book, once."

"Wasn't 1984, was it?"

"No, more like 1977."

"The book!" Logan laughed. "I once told V 1984 was the only book I've read."

"Oh! Catcher in the Rye, maybe? I don't remember." Keith said. "There was a guy in it. He did some stuff."

"Give Orwell a chance, he's not bad. I don't suppose you've changed your mind about next weekend?"

"No, you kids have fun. I'm sticking to my plan to come for labor day. You'll have more fun without me."

"I don't know, Sheriff; everyone's legal now. It's not like you're gonna bust anyone."

"Well, see? Where's the fun in it for me?"

"There's nothing she'd like more than to see you."

"There's nothing I'd like more either but when I come, I'd rather have her all to myself."

"I was kinda gonna be here, too. Is that okay?"

"Yes! I guess I could stand seeing you, too." Keith laughed. "Oh, I have another call. I'll have Eli prepare that file and fax it to you."

"Great! Thanks. Can I call you if I have questions?"

"Yeah, or text me. Eli made me learn to text message. Gotta go."

Logan closed his cell and looked at his screen. He hit 'save' and buzzed JR.

* * *

Veronica couldn't wait to get out of the office at five. Blythe had been obnoxious, interrupting her work no less than three times.

"That woman has definitely got a hard on for you." Tuski muttered, watching the older woman march down the aisle away from the two rookies.

"She's nothing." Veronica said, determined to believe it. "Someday we'll get out of here and she'll be naught but a bad memory."

"I swear, if she found out I was going out with Shep, she'd haul me up on charges." Tuski said. "She seems genuinely enraged by the idea that anyone, anywhere, might be having a good time."

"Especially at work." Veronica agreed. "She believes in peace through total demoralization."

"Do you think her official title is 'Special Agent in Charge of Buzz Kill'?"

"No, SACBuK doesn't really work," Veronica mused. "How about 'Agent in Charge of Unnecessarily Nasty Treatment'?"

"That would be ACU-" Tuski burst out laughing . "Yeah, that's her."

"What's so funny, now?" Agent Ted Morris demanded, turning around from the desk in front of Tuski. "You two have all the fun. I'm having flashbacks to fifth grade when Angie Johnson and Mindy Sanders giggled behind my back all year long. Then, I find out in high school that Mindy had a crush on me. You don't have a crush on me, do you, Tuski? 'Cus I'm a happily married man."

"Well, _my _heart's broken." Veronica said, chagrined.

"Seriously, if Cap'n Bligh there could give you two detention, I swear she would." Morris said, switching to a passable Gary Cole voice; "Yeah...I'm gonna have to ask you to come in on Saturday...yeah."

"Mars came up with a better nick name." Tuski told him.

"It's not a nick name, more like a title." Veronica said. "We can keep 'Cap'n Blythe'."

"Cap'n Blythe; Agent in Charge of Unnecessarily Nasty Treatment." Tuski told Morris.

"ACU-" he stopped on a choked off laugh. "Are you trying to get _me _in trouble now? _There's_ an acronym I'll never say around here. You two are good. Mean but good."

"I'm not mean, I'm a sweetheart!" Veronica objected. "Believe me, I know the difference!"

"I wouldn't hurt a fly!" Tuski said, batting her brown eyes. "Ask anyone."

"Really?" Morris asked. "Then whose weapon is that in your top drawer?"

"Well obviously, I would identify myself as a federal agent first and give the fly every chance to surrender."

"Not me." Veronica said. "I'd swat without warning. Even if it was the wrong fly, it's still a filthy rotten fly."

"Yeah," Morris nodded at her. "I bet you would."

* * *

When the clock finally hit five, Veronica grabbed her bag and headed for the parking lot.

"Mars!" Morris called "It's Friday. Coming to O'Gara's with us?"

"Not today," she said, punching the elevator button. "Gotta get home!"

And she was gone. Tuski and Morris looked at each other.

"I can not _wait _to meet that girl's husband." Tuski said.

* * *

Walking around the lake after dinner, Logan and Veronica watched the setting sun light the sky on fire.

"Talk to me, Veronica." Logan said. "What's up?"

"What? Nothing. What do you mean?"

"How long have I known you? You seem less than thrilled with work these days."

"Do I? Maybe I just miss you after nine hours away."

"While I'd love to believe that's it, I'm skeptical. You never talk about it anymore."

"Well, it's just that I'm still doing the same stuff. You'd be bored to death if I came home every night talking about the joys of snooping into the financial records and social contacts of people neither of us have ever heard of."

"Are you?"

"Am I? Yes, that's what I spend my days doing."

"Are you bored to death?"

"No. Not at all. I'm way too nosy to be bored by this stuff. You have no idea how many hours I've logged sitting in my car on fruitless stakeouts or listening to hours and hours of taped transcripts in the hope that something, somewhere will make some sense. That's the job."

"Well, something's bugging you. But you don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"Well, in addition to an office manager who's a real pain in the ass and just happens to _hate _me..."

"And people think I'm the one who has problems with authority." he shook his head.

"Yeah, I may have brought that on myself."

"You think?"

"Well, I'm sorry but I can't even remember what it was like to just nod my head and say 'yes sir' or 'no ma'am' to people just because they've been around longer than I have."

"Wisdom doesn't always come with age," he agreed. "The world if full of old fools."

"I should be used to dealing with them by now. I _am_ used to dealing with them. Blythe isn't the problem."

"What is the problem?"

"I feel like I'm working blind. Before, I always knew what I was looking for; or at least, I knew that I'd recognize it when I found it even if I didn't know what it was. It's not as much fun doing all this snooping just for the sake of snooping. Does that make sense?"

"So you don't know what the point is?"

"Exactly. Takes the edge off when I don't know the end game and I _love _the edge."

"You know this is just rookie stuff. You won't be doing it forever. If they have any brains at all, they'll get you out where you can really stick your nose into stuff in no time."

"I know. But for now, let's just say by five o'clock, I _really_ miss you."

"I'll make sure that doesn't change."

"The upside to this assignment is that it's strictly nine to five, Monday through Friday. When I do get out in the field, it'll be different."

"I know. We'll deal with it. My schedule is nothing if not flexible."

"Your flexibility is one of my favorite things about you." she grinned.

"Really? I was sure it was my stamina."

"Oh, you're right. It was _my _flexibility."

"I'm going to get us a canoe." Logan said, looking across the water, reflecting the orange and pink of the sky. "I'll paddle you out there after dark and we'll see how much we can do without tipping it over."

"You're gonna paddle me?"

"If that's what floats your boat..."

"In a canoe? No way."

"Come on, we've got stamina and flexibility, let's test our balance."

"Let's test it out where drowning isn't an option."

"We'll wear life vests."

"Oh. Hot." she nodded sarcastically.

"Yeah!" he looked her up and down.

"Stop imagining me in nothing but a life vest." she grabbed his arm and pulled him forward. "Let's keep moving or the mosquitoes will get us."

"L'Amour wrote about horses left tied out all night who were dead by morning, exsanguinated by the mosquitoes."

"That would be us, out in our canoe...drained of blood, wearing only our life vests."

"Safety first, V. Safety first."

"I really don't think doing it in a canoe, even with life vests, constitutes safe sex."

"We're married. We don't have to worry about that anymore."

"Did you _ever _worry about it?" she raised an eyebrow. Logan's youthful indiscretions had never seemed to come with any sort of pre-consideration involved.

"I always suited up. Pop gave me _pointed _warnings about the dangers of knocking some girl up. He told me he'd kill me and I believed him. 'Course, he never told me about Charlie. I guess he considered that a 'need to know' issue."

"Have you talked to Charlie lately?"

"Not since we moved in. You talked to Wallace lately?"

"Just email. He's down in San Diego getting ready for school to start. I'm so glad he got into that master's program."

"What is it that they gave him a scholarship for?"

"He's the grad assistant on the basketball team. Wouldn't it be something if after all these years of busting his hump on mechanical engineering, he winds up coaching basketball instead?"

"Knowing him, he'll start some humanitarian program in Africa, making life better through hoops!"

"That's our Wallace."

"He makes me want to be a better man." Logan sighed.

"Babe," Veronica said, slipping her arm around his waist, "if you were any better, I'd be crippled."

* * *

Another storm rolled in after midnight. Veronica woke with a start as thunder crashed above the house. No nightmare had plagued her sleep this time but she snuggled closer to the warm body in the bed beside her. Feeling her beside him, Logan dropped an arm over her.

"Scary out there." he said softly, as lightening lit the room.

"Mmmm." she nodded against his chest. He pulled her closer until he was almost laying on top of her. "What are you doing?" she giggled.

"I can't get close enough." he wrapped both arms around her and pressed her to him. "I want to be closer to you."

"Close enough? You're on top of me."

"I want to be running through your veins."

"Oh." she wrapped her arms around him. "Don't you know? You already are."

to be continued...


	13. Chapter 13 Good Things

Chapter 13 Good Things

Veronica sighed sleepily and opened her eyes. Once again, the room was filled with sunlight despite the wild and noisy storm during the night. Once again, she and Logan were wrapped around each other on about two feet of space in the middle of their enormous bed. She could feel the warmth of his sleeping form pressed against her back, her head tucked under his chin and his arms wrapped around her like he was afraid she would try to escape.

As though there were anywhere else on earth she'd rather be.

She could feel the rise and fall of his chest, his breathing still the deep, slow rhythm of sleep. She sighed happily and closed her eyes, perfectly content to fall back asleep and spend the whole day in bed with him.

"Oh." Her eyes flew open and she started. _Marla!_

"What?" he groaned, pulling her tightly against him.

"What time is it?" she murmured, straining to see the alarm clock far away on the dresser across the room.

"Saturday." He mumbled, kissing her ear. "Dun matter; y'good."

"I have plans." She said, struggling to sit up. He tightened his hold on her.

"Mmmmm….me too." He ran his hands up and down her body.

"It's after 8:00." She sighed. "I'm sorry. I don't have time; Marla's coming at nine."

"Oh." He rolled to the edge of the bed. Reaching to the floor, he pressed the button on a small, simple remote control unit. Then he rolled back in time to catch Veronica before she could get out of bed. "JR will handle it. C'mere."

"What do you mean?" she asked, allowing him to pull her back down into the covers. "What did you just do?"

"I buzzed JR. He'll have coffee ready for us when we go down. He'll let her in. C'mere."

"I…"

"Come here." He smiled sleepily at her.

She melted.

* * *

Marla parked her car in front of the house and walked up the front path. The storm during the night had knocked the edge off the humidity but it was already warm out and it promised to be another blistering hot day. She was dressed in a pair of white Capri pants and a pale blue sleeveless knit top. She had a pair of heels, a professional looking jacket and her makeup kit on the back seat of the car for later, when she joined Elliot at their open house but for now, a clean face and flip flops on her feet were far more comfortable. She rang the bell and looked back at the lake, glittering in the morning sun.

Hearing the door open behind her, she turned around to find herself face to face with a total stranger.

"OH. Hello." She smiled at the young man. "I'm here to see Veronica, I believe she's expecting me."

"O f course." He inclined his head politely. "If you'll come in, Mrs. Mars will be down shortly."

"I'm Marla Banks," she explained, coming inside. "I sold the Mars this house."

"Oh, this a great house. I'm JR. I work for Mr. Mars. Well, Mrs. Mars now too, I guess." He led Marla through the kitchen to the patio out back where a pot of hot coffee, a basket of warm muffins and a bowl of fruit sat on the table along with mugs, small plates and the morning paper. "Make yourself at home and I'll tell Mrs. Mars you're here."

"Thank you." Marla sat and poured herself a cup of coffee, looking around the beautiful back yard. She noticed the two new basketball hoops facing each other across the wide expanse of the concrete drive way. She opened the newspaper. Taking out the metro section, she turned to the ads and quickly found the sales they were planning to hit. She scanned the column and made a mental note of one or two others that hadn't been in Thursday's paper that they might want to check out. She was reading a story on the front of the section when JR returned.

"Mrs. Mars will be down soon." He said. "She apologizes for running late and hoped you would understand."

"It's quite all right." Marla smiled. _I've met her husband. _"How long have you worked for Mr. Mars?"

"Oh. A couple of years. He needed someone to run errands for him and I needed someone to throw ridiculous sums of money at me. It's worked out pretty well."

"So, you're not the _butler_ but more of a... personal assistant?"

"Yes."

"Quit flirting with our guest, JR." Logan said, coming out to the patio from the kitchen dressed only in a pair of sweat pants cut off just above the knee. "Go do something menial. Hey, Marla, nice to see you again." He dropped into another chair at the table. JR poured him a cup of coffee and set it in front of him, then withdrew to the kitchen.

"It's good to see you, Logan." Marla said. "Do you _ever_ wear a shirt?"

Logan sipped his coffee, brow furrowed as though thinking hard. "Yes." He finally answered.

"Did Veronica tell you what we're doing today?"

"Um…shopping?"

"We're going to _Estate Sales."_

"Shopping for estates? We've already got one."

"One 'shops' for shoes. When one goes Estate Saling, one never knows what one might find."

"That actually sounds dangerous."

"LOGAN." Veronica came out on to the patio and stopped. "Go put some clothes on!"

"VERONICA." He sipped his coffee. "Go take some clothes off."

_She already did that, it's why she's running late!_ Marla thought but she said "Good morning, Veronica. Have some coffee; there's no rush."

Veronica poured herself a cup and sat down, blushing brightly, confirming Marla's suspicion.

"Won't all the good stuff be gone?" she asked, striving for nonchalance. Logan watched her, appreciatively.

"That's garage sale thinking." Marla shook her head and lifted a finger, giving her tutorial. "With estate sales, whatever is gone is not meant for you and there's always the next one. I never go on the first day and I never stand in line. Some items do go right away, like book shelves. But since you've got an entire library with built-ins, I didn't think that was one of the things you'd be looking for."

"A couple of book cases for the bedrooms upstairs would be nice." Veronica said, thoughtfully.

"And here I thought a couple of _beds_ would be nice." Logan offered. "But if you think 'shelves', go for it."

* * *

After the ladies left, Logan finished his coffee and went back into the house. JR was in the kitchen, cleaning up.

"Jeez, Moneybags," he said. "You never mentioned that your realtor was smokin' hot."

"Dude, she's like…_pushing forty."_

"And Demi Moore is pushing fifty, what's your point?"

"Like 'em old, do you?"

"Ancient and desperate is a hot combination, as you well know."

"Veronica is only a few months older than I am."

"Like that's who I meant." JR snorted.

"That wasn't so much a case of desperation as it was utter depravity. And Kendall was _maybe _thirty." Logan defended his long ago liaison with an older woman.

"And you were _definitely _seventeen."

"If you say that had anything to do with me missing my Mom, I'm gonna beat the shit out of you."

"What? No! I'm just saying; older women. I get it."

"I may beat the shit out of you just on principle."

"What is wrong with appreciating the beauty of a fully mature woman?"

"Strike out with the hottie at the lake?"

"NO. In fact, I was wondering what your plans are for tonight?"

"I'm taking V out. You can go… do whatever it is you little people do."

"GREAT. I hear there's a barn raisin' and a ho-down out on the back forty."

"Swell. I'll be in my office." Taking his coffee with him, he headed out of the kitchen.

"Aren't you gonna get dressed?"JR called after him.

"Why?" Logan asked rhetorically as he crossed the living room.

"The kick boxing coach will be here at 10:30."

Without a word, Logan turned on his heel and headed up the stairs.

* * *

"Okay, tell me the address of the first sale I've circled." Marla said. Veronica dutifully read off the directions.

"This should be fun." Marla said. "Edina is far and away the ritziest of the first ring suburbs and Indian Hills is the most exclusive part of Edina. Most of our local celebrities live there."

"Like who?"

"Oh…Kirby Puckett. But he's dead. I don't know. Who cares?"

"What's a 'kirby puckett'?"

"Wha-I.." Marla sputtered, incredulous. "You don't know who KIRBY PUCKETT is?"

"I don't even know _what _a Kirby Puckett is." Veronica shrugged.

"Only the greatest Minnesota Twin since Harmon Killebrew! The Hero of the '87 series? He practically won it single handed!"

"'Kirby Puckett' and 'Harmon Killebrew'. Must one be named like a cartoon character to play for the Twins?"

"I will throw you right out of this car." Marla deadpanned.

"I don't follow sports. My dad lives and dies with the Padres and I used to like baseball but now I couldn't name a single player. And I was only two months old when the '87 series happened."

"Well, he did it again in '91." Marla said, as though that should make a difference.

"I was four."

"You whippersnappers are completely ignorant of history." Marla sighed, melodramatically.

"Is it Shelby Cupid's house we're going to?"

"Kirby Puckett! No. Sadly, he died very young. But he lived in Indian Hills. As I said, it's one of our most exclusive suburban neighborhoods. Wayzata has always had more money but it's not so full of itself. It's across Lake Minnetonka from where you were the other night. These days, tons of the big money is out in Plymouth, which I just don't understand. Some developers built a bunch of McMansions on celebrity designed golf courses and whoosh! The money flew west. I'm with you; if I could afford whatever I wanted, I'd buy a house on a lake in town. I have a couple of friends who live in one of those fancy pants 'Estates' out in Plymouth and one swears all her neighbors are swingers 'cause there's nothing else to do. They move out there so they can have two acre lawns for their kids to play on and they built an enormous, ridiculously fancy high school, which was apparently a big fat waste of money since one of our crumbling city high schools was just named the number one school in the state. Out in Plymouth, they tell themselves everything they do is 'for the children' and the kids repay them by getting into drugs and sex as soon as possible because they're so bored."

"Wow. When you sugarcoat it like that, it sounds just like the place where I grew up."

"Where was that?"

"A little unincorporated township just North of San Diego."

"Lots of swingers and drug abuse in your town?"

"Lots of folks with enough money to believe that they get to write their own rules of conduct, as long as they can afford to clean up the mess afterward. "

"Is that why you became interested in law enforcement? Fairness, justice, balance; that sort of thing?"

"Well, partly. I was raised to it; my Dad was the Sheriff when I was a kid. He's a P.I. now."

"Really? A private investigator? I've never known anyone who did that. Not in real life, anyway."

"You know a lot of imaginary P.I.'s?"

"No," Marla laughed. "You know what I mean. People only do that for a living in books by Elmore Leonard and tv shows starring Pierce Brosnan or Tom Selleck."

"I've been licensed in the state of California since I was nineteen. I worked for and then with my Dad."

"Get out! Before you joined the bureau you were a…a gumshoe?"

"Gumshoe, flatfoot, private dick. Yes ma'am."

"Did you do…stake outs?"

"Stake outs, tails, shadows, electronic surveillance, skip traces, …I'm quite an accomplished stalker. I used to love photography but I seem to have lost my passion for the art somewhere around my thousandth money shot."

"Are they as gross as the name implies?"

"Not necessarily but yes. Usually. Yes. Yuck."

"So you actually spied on people, taking pictures of them behaving badly?"

"It sounds so tawdry when you say it like that." Veronica sighed.

"How does it sound when you say it?"

"I only did it if there was an injured party willing to pay me. Oh," Veronica laughed, "that doesn't sound much better, does it?"

"It sounds like a lot more fun than real estate. If I had been a little less naïve, I would have hired someone like you way back when. I could have found out about Bruce and escaped _years _of anxiety, self doubt and rage. I'm just surprised that a young girl would be drawn to the field. Celebrity photography seems like a more likely career choice. You certainly had the skill set."

"I would live on road kill for the rest of my life before I'd join the paparazzi. Calling them vultures is an insult to scavengers."

"Tell me about it." Marla nodded, sympathetically. "You're way too young to have been a fan of Princess Diana's. I cried for a week. What's the worst thing you ever caught on film?"

"Oh…" _the town benefactor leaving an assignation at a seedy hotel with a woman who turned out to be my own mother? My future husband having sex with his best friend's step mom? _"Oh, God…" _None of that was as bad as seeing my best friend in bed with her murderer. "_Let's just say that by the time I was seventeen, I swore I'd never get married."

"And yet here you are at the ripe old age of twenty…two? All married up."

"Hey, I'm almost twenty _three_."

"What happened to change your mind?"

"Um…" _the whole world turned inside out, upside down, backwards, forwards and upright again? _"I kissed Logan."

"Really? Just like that?"

"Well, it was a little more …" _be honest, Veronica. "_Yeah; just like that."

"You're lucky. That hardly ever happens. Not in real life, anyway." Marla sighed and turned down a wide tree lined street in a neighborhood of stately homes and beautiful landscapes. "We're almost there. Now we just follow the signs."

Sure enough, on the corner was a sign reading 'Vintage Estate Sales' with an arrow, directing traffic.

"Ooh, this one's gonna be good!" Marla said as they drove past the front of the house. The street was lined with cars and there was a steady stream of people walking across the yard, a few coming out with their purchases. Marla found a parking spot about a half block from the enormous house.

"Now, I usually check out the garage, attics and basements." Marla said as they walked toward the house. "But we don't have to today if you don't want to. You want nice, ready to use furniture so we'll stick to the main floors. Heck, we don't even have to look in the kitchen if you don't feel like it."

"I think I want to explore this place from top to bottom!" Veronica said as they entered the two story foyer.

Ten minutes later, they were back in the foyer.

"See anything you liked?" Marla asked, giving Veronica a look that made her bite her lip to keep from laughing out loud.

"I think," Veronica said under her breath, "that this is the ugliest house I've ever set foot in."

"We're done here." Marla nodded.

They were half way to the car when Marla lost it. She couldn't contain herself one more minute and she laughed so hard she doubled over.

"Come on," Veronica laughed, tugging at her companion. "Let's get out of here! I don't even want to be on the same block as that house."

"Did you see that _room in the basement?" _Marla gasped, tears streaming down her face. "Pink shag carpeting _on the walls? _Why, why, why?"

"I don't want to know! The only thing missing were shackles! I could hardly breathe in the living room; red flocked wall paper! Did the Chicken Ranch have a decorating seminar?"

"Gold Cherub wall sconces!" Marla shrieked.

"I felt like I was trapped in an episode of Trading Spaces In Hell."

"That was the work of an Interior Desecrator. Admit it; that place made you wish you had your camera on you!" Marla wiped her eyes and got behind the wheel.

"That whole house was a crime against humanity and every room was a money shot."

"A purple satin tufted headboard for $1700.00? Who would buy that? My God, if the seventies ever come back, I'm joining a cloistered convent. Either that or have my eyeballs surgically removed."

"The seventies couldn't have been _that_ ugly."

"They were."

"Oh come on," Veronica scoffed. "That's like me saying I remember that the eighties rocked."

"Hardly! You were a toddler when the eighties ended. I was in high school during the seventies."

"You were not!"

"Was too. I didn't graduate til '82 but I started in '78." Marla laughed. Seeing the astonished look on Veronica's face, she said in her best Samantha Jones, "I'm _forty_ fucking _five_!"

"YOU ARE NOT."

"I was in love with John Travolta when he was a sweat hog."

"No Way."

"Vinnie Barbarino was my first crush."

"I thought you were _maybe _thirty five!"

"Nope. I'm old enough to have discoed, unironically. _And _I know what that word actually means."

"You could totally get away with lying about your age."

"To the FBI?" Marla gasped. "I wouldn't dare. Besides, I never understood that. I like getting credit for looking good. Think of how impressed people would be if I started claiming I was _fifty!"_

"Now I don't know whether to believe you're even forty five."

"Veronica, I don't lie to my friends."

* * *

Down in the gym, Logan and JR were listening to Mr. Joe Tucker, a former kick boxing champion turned martial arts instructor. He was middle aged but still powerfully built, with a demeanor that brooked no nonsense and the voice of a drill instructor.

"I used to own a karate studio in St. Louis Park," He barked while inspecting the gym. "I really enjoyed teaching the kids but the GOD DAM parents were getting worse by the year. Can't tell you how many Mom's just couldn't handle me yelling at PRECIOUS. The concept that you have to SHUT UP TO LISTEN was too tough for them to get their brains around. I was doing them a favor; teaching their kids some DISCIPLINE but they were too wrapped up in their fuckin' feelings to get it. So I sold the business to one of my pupils and now I just teach a few classes a week, to the more advanced kids. My time is flexible but my fees aren't. Thirty bucks an hour per student. Saturday mornings are good for me. I've got a standing 6:00 tee time but it's at Theodore Wirth so I can be here by 10:00."

"You can get in a round and be here in four hours?" Logan asked, impressed.

"Son, if you take longer than three and a half to shoot eighteen at 6 a.m., YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG."

"Let's book Saturday mornings." JR said. "But I have to warn you; there will be times when we have to leave town on short notice. I may not be in a position to let you know if we're here or not."

Joe glared at him for a moment before answering. "I can work with that. I'll call or text you when I come in off the course."

JR and Logan looked at each other.

"That's fine." JR nodded. "If I don't answer, don't come over."

"Got it." Joe nodded. "Text first; if it's answered, we're on, if not, go home. GOT IT. Once a week all you need?"

"I'd really like it if you came ever day." JR said.

"Every day?" Logan's eyebrows shot up.

"I'm serious about this." JR said. "You should be, too."

"Every day is too much to start out." Joe said. "You want to start slow to avoid injury. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday."

"Okay." JR nodded. He looked at Logan.

"An hour, three days a week? I can do that." Logan nodded. "Is it okay if my wife joins us, sometimes?"

"Yeah, she really should." JR looked at Joe.

"Every woman in America should take self defense courses." Joe agreed. "BE YOUR OWN BODY GUARD. That's one of my mottoes. I'd be more than happy to include her. I can use another $30.00 an hour."

"No problem." JR said. "Do we have all the equipment we need to get started?"

"Yeah, this looks like a pretty good set up." Joe nodded his approval of the gym. "This is one of the better home gyms I've seen. Most of 'em just have some pussy mats on the floor and a couple of machines no one ever uses and mirrors so they look like a fuckin' AEROBICS STUDIO. This space has good light. You've got a ring. I like that."

* * *

An hour later, Logan and JR were up on the patio, exhausted, sweaty and sore. JR sprawled in a chair, chugging a large glass of ice water. Logan was spread eagle on the cool stone, a wet towel over his head.

"That was GREAT." he said.

"That man is a sadist." JR groaned.

"That was AWESOME."

"He tried to kill us. He's insane."

"He's the BEST." Logan pulled the towel off his face and looked at JR. "You really need to get in shape, dude."

"I had no idea."

"And you wanted to go through that every day!" Logan laughed, sitting up. "You'd be dead by Thursday. But it's good. You're right; we need this."

"I don't know... next week you get your carry permit..."

"No, this is going to be good. Just imagine how much fun it'll be getting in the ring with Veronica."

"She'll kick my ass."

"I meant how much fun it'll be for me."

"She'll kick your ass too."

"Yeah, she will!"

"I don't want to hear about your kinky proclivities..."

Just then, the front door bell rang. They looked at each other and JR hoisted himself out of the chair. He went to answer the door and Logan got up and sat at the table, taking a long pull off his ice water. A moment later, JR was back, his eyes huge.

"Look who's here." He said.

Following him out to the patio was Candy.

Candy 2.0.

"Oh my God. What did you do?" Logan asked.

"I cut my hair, just like you told me." Candy said, running a hand over his newly shorn scalp. He wasn't bald but not a hair on his head was longer than a quarter inch.

"I told you to go to a barber, not a shepherd!"

"Well, it occurred to me that if I was gonna go short, I'd have to get it cut like, all the time. I'm unemployed; I can't even afford Great Clips every two weeks. Clippers at Target are about the same as a hair cut so I bought some and did it myself."

"You look like a convict."

"Good!"

"Chicks will not dig it." Logan shook his head. "They like hair."

"Oh." Candy looked momentarily crestfallen. "I could grow a mustache?" he perked up.

"NO." Logan and JR said simultaneously.

"How about a goatee? Those are cool."

"If you want to look like a serial killer." Logan shook his head.

"Oh." Candy's shoulders slumped again. "What about my clothes? I did like you said; ill fitting jeans and plaid."

"Where the fuck did you get a plaid t-shirt?"

"Well, it's an improvement, isn't it? Although, it's too fucking hot for this." Candy peeled his shirt off to reveal a white wife beater over a pale, wiry torso. "Do you think a tattoo would help?"

"No." Logan winced.

"Really? I though maybe barbed wire around my bicep..."

"Would emphasize how pathetically wimpy your arms are. Get some sun, you look like a fuckin' vampire."

"Tans aren't healthy." Candy objected. "Melanoma, wrinkles..."

"Find something in between 'I sleep in a coffin' and 'I sleep in an easy bake oven'. Don't make this harder than it is."

"But it's so bad for your skin..." Candy's voice died away at the look on Logan's face. "Okay. I've started season one of Rescue Me."

"Well, that's good." JR said.

"The first episode made me cry."

* * *

Marla and Veronica had much better luck at the next few sales they hit. In a prairie style house in Linden Hills, Marla found two picture frames and a brass floor lamp. Veronica found an antique radio table that would be perfect for Logan's video game components. In a Victorian era Mansion on Mount Curve Veronica found a beautiful polished walnut dining room table with three leaves and six chairs that were wide, clean lined and comfortable _and _a bedroom set; full sized carved wooden bed frame, a marble topped dresser with an oval mirror and brass tear drop drawer pulls and two matching marble topped bed side tables. All the furniture together cost a fraction of what they had spent on the partner's desk.

"I told you; Estate Sales!" Marla said as they headed for the car.

"I can't _believe it!"_ Veronica bounced with excitement. "I can hardly wait for JR to get this stuff home, it's BEAUTIFUL. And it was so _cheap!"_

Marla just laughed. She had thoroughly enjoyed watching Veronica's face as the younger woman had spotted the dining room set. Veronica had practically licked it to mark it as her own once she'd seen the price tag. After the sale worker had written a slip for her, and marked the set as 'sold', Veronica had clutched it to her chest as though she were afraid someone else would try to take it from her.

"You know, it'll be even less tomorrow, if you're willing to gamble..." Marla had said.

"NO way." Veronica shook her head. "I'm more than happy to pay this pittance for the perfect table." She was more than happy to pay for the bedroom set in one of the smaller rooms upstairs, as well.

It was almost noon when she wrote the check and made arrangements for JR to pick up the furniture later in the day. To celebrate her good fortune, she offered to make Marla lunch when they got back to the house.

"You're on. Can you make a decent sandwich?" Marla asked.

"I can, if you're willing to settle for decent. But JR makes a fabulous turkey club."

"What"s JR's story?"

"Oh...he started as a bell hop at the hotel where Logan lived. They got along so Logan eventually hired him full time."

"That's nice."

"Yes. JR's educational background is the same as mine; criminology and psychology, so he's actually well trained for taking care of Logan."

Marla frowned and looked at the girl beside her. Veronica looked happy and relaxed; completely unaware that she had said anything strange.

_Okay. _"What sort of photography did you enjoy?" Marla asked.

"Oh...All sorts." Veronica said. "Landscapes, sea scapes. People. I liked photos that evoked a mood, or told a story. That was my forte; photos that told the _whole_ story."

"That's what they paid you for." Marla shrugged. "You should take it up again. A talent for art shouldn't be suppressed. It'll help you stay sane."

"I know! I've actually felt the old desire flare up a bit since we got here. You know, part of it was just that while I was in school, I was so busy and all my photos were work related and it just wasn't fun anymore. But last night, we were walking around Lake of the Isles as the sun set and it was so beautiful, I wished for the first time in years that I had a camera with me and for the first time in years, I didn't. Altogether weird."

"You've chosen a profession that will bring you in contact with a lot of ugliness. You need something to remind you that the world and its people are full of beauty, too."

"That seems a lot easier to remember here than it was back in Neptune." Veronica said. "But I know you're right."

* * *

Ten minutes later they were back at the house; Mount Curve wasn't that far from Cedar Lake.

"Logan!" Veronica called, swinging in through the front door. "I bought us some cool stuff! Where's JR? Oh." Heading toward the kitchen, she could see through the door to the back yard. "They're out on the patio. Come on."

She and Marla went out onto the patio and stopped short.

"Candy!" Marla exclaimed. "_Your hair_!"

"Wow." Veronica said.

"This is not my fault." Logan said.

"Yes it is." JR contradicted.

"Whatever." Candy scowled at them. "It's just hair. It'll grow back."

"I _like_ it." Veronica said. All three men stared at her.

"You do?" Candy smiled. "Really?"

"God, yes!" Marla agreed. "It looks _great_!"

"Don't humor him." Logan said disgustedly. "He's practically _bald."_

"What's wrong with that?" Marla asked. "Bald is hot."

"It is?" Logan looked at Veronica, who was still staring at Candy.

"Hell yes." she said, snapping out of it. "Bald men are smokin' hot."

"Really?" Logan asked, looking confused. He put a hand to his own thick head of hair.

"Name one." JR demanded.

"Michael Jordan, Peter Gabriel, Bruce Willis, Yul Brynner, Tony Soprano, Vin Diesel, Jean Luc Picard, Michael Chiklis, Skinner, Jason Statham..." Marla rattled off.

"Smith Jared." Veronica said, dreamily.

"YES." Marla turned to her with a grin. "When he said 'Shit happens' and took that razor to his hair..."

"He wound up twice as hot as before!" Veronica nodded.

"Omigod, I LOVE that show! Didn't you just _cheer _when Samantha threw her wig?" Candy said, happily. He looked at Logan. "I'm keepin' it." He said, running his hand over his scalp.

"I don't get it." Logan said. "You _like _bald?"

"Yes." both women said.

"Don't worry, Doll Face." Veronica reached up and ruffled his hair. "I love _your _hair. It's just that bald guys are...are..."

"Virile." Marla said. "Women don't go bald, so we find it manly. It's not like an ugly guy can just shave his head for instant sex appeal or anything, although it couldn't hurt, but an attractive man isn't less attractive for losing his hair."

"Why not?" JR asked.

"Well...it's..." Marla tried to explain. "It's like breasts." All three men looked skeptical. "You all _like_ big ones but you find plenty of flat chested girls hot, don't you?"

Three pairs of eyes immediately turned towards Veronica, nodding.

"Thanks, guys." she said. "Thanks a lot."

"So..." said JR, as though he were working out a puzzle "if you were designing the perfect man, you'd give him a head of hair but on _actual _guys, it's a non factor."

"Pretty much." Veronica nodded.

"Not me." Marla said. "I mentally shave guys' heads."

"You do?" all four of them looked at her.

"Hey, I was married to a guy who primped more than I did and I was a pageant girl! I'll take a baldie every time."

"He's bald now." Candy reminded her.

"He's gay now." Marla reminded him.

"Is it a Dad thing?" Logan asked Veronica.

"Probably." she smiled and shrugged. "Lucky for you, you're shagginess not that big a deal. In all the ways that matter, you're just like him."

"You're grossing me out, Sugarpuss." he said, but slid an arm around her waist.

"No I'm not." she grinned and put her arms around him.

"You're both grossing me out." JR said. "Who wants lunch?"

* * *

Candy left feeling confident that his manliness factor was improving. JR made lunch inside and Veronica told Logan about the sales. As they ate, she gave JR instructions on how to find the house where the new furniture awaited pick up. Marla's description of the first sale had all of them rolling.

"I can't believe you didn't buy us a leopard print fainting couch," Logan said. "That sounds cool."

"No, no; the wall paper was leopard print!" Veronica said. "The fainting couch was orange vinyl!"

"And _not _as cool as it sounds." Marla assured him.

When they were finished eating, Marla thanked them for the lovely morning and went off to help Elliot with the Open House. Veronica told JR that she was more than happy to clean up lunch if he would get a move on and go pick up her new furniture.

"I'll come with you." she said, after giving him the reciepts and detailed instructions.

"Don't worry about it, Mars." JR said. "This is what I'm here for. Hang out with Moneybags for a while."

"I think you'll like it," she said to Logan as they brought in the dishes after JR left. "The bed and dresser can go in one of the other rooms but I want the bed side tables for us. Just think; I'll be able to hit the snooze button without getting out of bed and your handy dandy buzzer will be at arms reach."

"Sounds like you two had a lot of fun." he said.

"I did. We laughed. A lot."

"Good. I gotta go take a shower. Think you'll be up for a bike ride later on?"

"Of course. First, I'm gonna find my camera."

to be continued...


	14. Chapter 14 Diamonds

Chapter 14 Diamonds

After lunch, Logan and Veronica grabbed some towels and went down to one of the beaches within a stone's throw of their front door.

"Sun or shade?" Veronica asked before they spread their towels.

"Melanoma…wrinkles…let's take advantage of the shade." Logan nodded to the dappled sand beneath the cottonwoods lining the beach. "It's plenty hot enough without frying."

"Since when do you worry about that stuff?" Veronica asked, as she lay down her towel and stripped off her cover up.

"Since I met an aspiring esthetician. Besides, I like your alabaster skin just the way it is."

"Well, I brought sun screen. Mind getting my back?" she pulled a bottle out of the beach bag and shook a large dollop into her hand.

"Can I get your front, too?"

"No but you can watch me get it." She began rubbing sunscreen on her chest.

"Mind getting my front?"

"This is a public beach!" She nodded toward the groups of mom's with kids scattered across the sand.

"Plenty of my front is fit for the public."

"I can see that. Let's keep the rest of it that way."

"I do have _some _self control, Sugar britches." He said, rubbing a palm full of lotion on her back.

"I don't."

"Oh."

Logan went out into the water and swam half way across the lake. Veronica pulled her camera out of her bag and walked up and down the shore, snapping shots of the lake, the surrounding woods and everything else that caught her fancy. She took a half dozen of Logan walking up out of the water toward her.

"I think I'll turn the second closet in our room into a photography studio." She said when he dropped to the towel beside her. "We're never gonna have enough clothes to fill even one of those."

"_I_ might." He lay back, propped on his elbows, looking out at the water.

"You think?" she grinned at him. "You'll save a corner of it for me, won't you?"

"How much of a corner?" he frowned at her. "I'm conflicted; I'd like to dress you up in fancy duds but I like the idea of you with no clothes at all even better."

"I know what you mean." She let her eyes wander all over him. "We'll figure it out. I'll have to take down most of the shelves."

"What else will you need? A desk?"

"Or a drawing board, plenty of cork on the walls, a table for a printer…a large capacity, hi-def printer. Maybe a flat file. I don't know exactly; I'll start fairly small."

"You'll need… a chair."

"Yes. I knew your input would be valuable."

"That's a great idea. I'm glad you're gonna get your camera out again. You were really good."

"Thank you." She looked at him with her head cocked. "What exactly, are you basing that opinion on?"

"Lilly had a lot of your stuff. I noticed. There was one you took of us that was my favorite…I never told you how much I liked your work. I don't know why."

"Cuz… you were a fifteen year old jackass?"

"Ah, yes." He nodded as though she had discovered something new. "That and the part of the code that prevents guys from telling their buddy's girl that they love 'em."

"You mean you loved my work."

"Yeah, but I loved you, too."

"You didn't love me, you loved Lilly."

"I did." He nodded but looked at her. "But I loved you, too. And if I had ever tried to tell you how much I liked your pictures, I might have let that slip."

"You are so full of crap." She reached out and shoved his shoulder.

"Yeah, but that's beside the point," he laughed, falling back onto his towel.

"You think just because you love me now, you always did. I know you didn't."

"So many things you think you know…" He sighed and closed his eyes.

"For awhile there, you _hated _me."

"I never hated you."

"You may as well have."

"I didn't. But either way that's no argument that I didn't love you. Hate's not the opposite of love; indifference is."

"You and I have certainly never been indifferent to each other." She admitted.

"Nope. Hate is often just love, disappointed."

"Who said that?"

"Weren't my lips moving?" He opened one eye and peered at her.

"No, mean who said it first?"

"I'm extemporizing here. If someone else said it first that's only because it's obvious."

"With you it's so hard to tell." She shook her head and looked back out at the water.

"Because I've never been known to have an original thought?"

"No, because you spend so much time pretending you don't have _any_ thoughts."

"I never pretend that. Folks just presume 'cause I'm so good lookin'. The idea of someone having both beauty and brains throws off their sense of proportion, not to mention justice. That's why people don't like _you_."

"People _like_ me." She said, unconvincingly.

"Not really."

"You're like an iceberg."

"An iceberg with a killer physique and a classic profile?"

"Yeah." She grinned. "That's the one."

"Best known for sinking the Titanic and killing thousands in a single night?"

"Hardly." she giggled.

"Cold and impenetrable? That actually does sound like me."

"No. You give the impression of being one thing but beneath the surface you're something else entirely."

"You're thinking of a duck; calm on the surface and paddling like mad underneath."

"You are _not_ like a duck. You pretend things roll off your back, but…" _I've seen the scars. _She shook her head again. _"_No; I'm thinking you're eighty percent below the surface."

"Look who's talking;" He half sat up, propping himself on his elbows. "Ms. All-American Cheerleader who just happens to have a license to kill."

"Sadly, that license seems to be an urban myth. But I don't deliberately give the impression that I'm a high school ditz." She pointed out. "You _like_ giving people the wrong impression."

"I don't _give_ people anything. What they take is entirely up to them. Their prejudices aren't my fault."

"Nothing is ever your fault."

"How could it be?" he grinned. "Everything is your fault."

"What?" She turned from the water and glared at him. He laughed.

"You _know_ there's a big part of you that thinks bad shit wouldn't happen if only you had seen it coming. Preventing shit is not your responsibility. You're not in charge of the world, V. You're not God." He rolled to his side, propping himself on one elbow, facing her. "You're not even an angel, regardless of what I may have thought when I first met you."

"Explain, please." She lay back, propping herself on one elbow facing him.

"Well, in the beginning, God created the Heavens and Earth…"

"Not that part. I know I'm not in charge of the world. Do you think I have control issues?"

He raised his eyebrows and blinked, slowly.

"Yeah, okay." She conceded. "I have control issues, but I never passed myself off as an angel. Explain how you've rewritten the past now to say that I did."

"I'm not rewriting or re-inventing or misremembering it. You never passed yourself off; you never had to. When I moved to Neptune, I'd known Duncan and Lilly for years. Of course, that was when we were all kids. Smokin' hot Lilly was new. That girl hit puberty like it was a road block and she was a 66 Thunderbird convertible."

"Yeah, she did. She was into a C-cup before I outgrew my first training bra."

"_Did_ you outgrow your first—?" His eyes slid to her chest.

"Back on track, please."

"In a minute…Yeah. So." His eyes met hers again. "I may have been a bit blinded by the hot new version of Lilly Kane but not so much that I couldn't appreciate her bestie in knee socks. I had just gotten to town and you two had come home from a game or…I don't know. Whatever."

"I don't remember that. I don't remember the first time we met."

"Well, you know, it wasn't like we were introduced or anything. I was just hanging with Duncan. You and Lilly breezed through. Duncan told me who you were. I just noticed the pair."

"Two blondes." She nodded.

"No, Lilly's pair."

"Shut up!" she shoved his shoulder again.

"I was twelve!" he laughed. "That's what I noticed. It's pretty much all I could see at that age." Then he looked at her and the laughter in his eyes turned into something much softer. "I love your streamlined form; less dependent on defying gravity. My first impression of you was that you were hot. Not as hot as Lilly, but you know; who was at twelve? When I got to know you a little, you seemed like the embodiment of 'virtue'. You were so _good_you practically glowed. I am certain that on more than one occasion, I saw a halo. You and Duncan were like an advertisement for following the rules. Getting the two of you to break a few with us was like…pulling teeth."

"Makes us sound so boring."

"Yeah. Boring. Now you carry a gun and DK's a fugitive. How weird is it that _he's_ the one who knocked up his girlfriend, stole the baby and went underground and _I'm _the one here with you?"

"Shit really _does_ happen." Veronica nodded.

"Enough to make you wonder if Einstein was wrong; God does play dice with the universe. Even Lilly tried to behave herself when she was with you. Sort of, anyway. Duncan thought you were the perfect girl and it never occurred to me to argue. I loved Lilly because she was just like me; fucked up and fun. We bitched about our parents and were hot for each other. She was willing to roll around in the dirt with me while you…you were like this porcelain doll, locked in a crystal case, out of reach on the top shelf. Completely unobtainable."

"I wasn't…unobtainable." Veronica winced at this description of herself.

"Yes, you were. Duncan was happy to be in his own case up there, next to yours. I loved you, but I had no illusions about my ability to rise out of the dirt."

"I was…" she stopped. She couldn't argue that she was down there, too. Looking back on those days of innocence, before Lilly's murder, before Shelly Pomroy's party…Veronica could barely remember the girl she'd been. The girl she'd tried to be.

"Why do you think I was so pissed off at you for awhile there?" Logan went on. "When you turned on us, it was like…being cast out of Eden all over again."

"Eden? You are full of Biblical references today!"

"Biblical? I meant that club down on…"

"Yet still so full of crap!" she cut him off, laughing.

"You love my crap." He laughed, too. "Don't forget; the second part of the Bible is all about redemption."

"The second part? You mean the New Testament?"

"I've always just thought of it as 'Act II'."

"You would. Have you actually _read_ the Bible?" she asked, determined not to be surprised if he said yes.

"Nah." He shook his head. "I heard the ending sucks."

"Only if you're on the wrong side."

"You understand that I'm not that crazy about the idea of judgment."

"All things considered, I'd say you come out way ahead."

"Only because of you."

She looked at him, a question in her eyes.

"Lilly's death was an earthquake." He explained. "It shook the foundations of everything. The ground opened up and swallowed me. Duncan got knocked clean off that top shelf, but you didn't. Your glass case was broken but you never fell. I guess I figured it wouldn't be so bad, living in Hell, if you were there, too. So I spent the next year and a half trying to pull you down."

"Is that what you think happened? That we're together now because I'm as fucked up as you?"

"No." he shook his head. "Not at all. I was trying to pull you down but you were too strong for me. Next thing I knew, you had dragged me up out of the pit. I've been trying to climb up to you, ever since."

Her breath left her in a whoosh and she stared at him, her mouth open in amazement. He laughed but stopped abruptly.

"Hey, don't," he said quickly. "I didn't say that to make you cry."

"No, no; they're happy tears." She smiled, wiping away the sudden tears in her eyes. "You are _so good at this! _Every time I think I'm getting used to the insanely beautiful things you say to me, you go and up the ante!"

"I do spend a good share of my time thinking up new ways to render you speechless." He admitted with a smirk.

"You really don't have to work so hard." She assured him.

"But doing it without using my hands is part of the challenge." He explained.

"You were always good at this but you keep on getting better." She sighed, smiling at him.

"As long as you keep looking at me like that, I will keep working on it." He said then leaned forward and kissed her. He rested his forehead against hers. "And I like the way the world looks through your camera lens. You should have a computer specifically for photography." He laid back and closed his eyes. "Tell me what the best is and I'll get it for you."

"You're the best." She breathed, running a finger up his chest and tickling his chin. "Ready to go?"

"I don't know. This feels pretty good." He didn't open his eyes.

"Could feel even better…" she ran her finger down his chest.

"Isn't this still a public beach?" his eyes snapped open and he grabbed her hand as it passed his belly button.

"I warned you. I have no self control." She grinned, leaning against him and lowering her voice. "Come on, you started it. Now take me home and make love to me."

"What do you think I've been doing all afternoon?" he closed his eyes, still holding her hand. "I want to show you something I found the other day."

"Oh, I found it a long time ago. I know where it is and I know how it works."

"Not that." He chuckled. "Something new."

"What is it?"

"I'll show you later."

"Tell me." She cajoled.

"It's a surprise."

"Tell me!" She ordered.

"It's a secret."

"You get me all hot and bothered and now you try to distract me with secrets?" she complained, pulling her hand out of his.

"It's a couple miles from the house. We'll take our bikes, later."

"What is it?" she placed her hand on his knee.

"You'll like it." He smiled but didn't open his eyes.

"Come on, Tell me." She coaxed, letting her hand slide slowly up his thigh.

"You want to try and get it out of me?" He grabbed her hand before it could cause any…harm. "Then we should probably move this up to the house."

"If we do," she leaned against him and whispered in his ear, "will you tell me?"

"No, but I promise; you won't care."

"Let's go." She hopped up, grabbed her beach bag and towel.

"This is turning out to be the best day _ever." _He said, sitting up.

* * *

When they came off the beach they could see that JR had the rental truck in front of the house and the men he'd hired were hauling Veronica's new furniture inside.

"Oh! Come on!" she turned to Logan with an excited grin.

"Oh." He was considerably less excited than she was but he followed her back to the house.

"Hey, Mars." JR said when Veronica reached the front door. "Nice stuff. Got a bed, a dresser with a mirror, a whole bunch of tables and a dining room set with three leaves and eight chairs."

"Eight chairs? I thought there were only six." Veronica said, looking at the set.

"They found two more and they're all yours."

"Even better!" She bounced on her toes and called to Logan who was just coming up the walk. "Come see! We can have dinner parties, now!"

"Goody." He said, coming in the front door. "I've really missed feeding people I don't like."

"We won't feed anyone that you don't like." Veronica assured him. "But now when Dad comes to visit, he won't have to sit at the counter."

"Score one for the Sheriff." Logan nodded. "Where's the rest of it?"

"The bed is upstairs," JR said. "I don't know which room you wanted it in…"

"Oh," Veronica ran up the stairs to direct the movers.

"You don't seem very excited." JR said to Logan. "Where were you planning on feeding…"

"No, no. This is great." Logan said. "It's just put a cramp in my plan for _right now_."

"Jeez." JR rolled his eyes and shook his head. "I can't leave you two alone for five minutes."

"I wish you'd try."

* * *

A few hours later, the furniture was all in place, a new box spring and mattress had been ordered for the new bed, Logan's video equipment had all been set up in the flip top table and the dining area adjacent to the kitchen now boasted a handsome table and chairs. Veronica had insisted that they remove two of the leaves from the table and store them. Broken down, it was just the right size for four. They liked that it didn't take up all the space. Two of the extra chairs were set near the floor to ceiling windows facing the lake and the other two were near the large windows looking out at the back yard.

"Tonight, we eat dinner at a table!" she said to Logan.

"No; tonight, we have plans."

"Oh? Is that the secret you told me about at the beach?"

"You remembered? I thought that entire episode had slipped your mind."

"In all the time you've known me, have I ever let a secret slip my mind?"

"No, just…other things."

"That hasn't slipped my mind either, Doll face."

"Ah, but you've never gotten a new dining room set, before. It's a day of firsts."

"I haven't forgotten anything. Not promises made, nor promises implied." She slipped her hands under the edge of his t-shirt. "Jeff is gone…"

"I know, I tossed him out the back door myself." He leaned down and kissed her. Just as she was about to slide her arms around his waist, he straightened and said "It's time to go."

"Go? Go where? Time for what?" she frowned.

"Get your biking shoes on. I'll take you there. But don't worry; I haven't forgotten any promises, either."

Fifteen minutes later they were riding down the bike path just east of Cedar Lake. Despite being in the middle of the city, the path was completely wooded and secluded. The occasional rooftop peeking through the trees and the occasional fellow bicyclist were the only reminders of civilization as they rode through trees and meadows for well over a mile before the free way loomed high over the trees.

"This is really beautiful." Veronica said. "When did you take this path?"

"Just the other day. I went all the way around downtown to the river and back up the parkway. It's over twenty miles."

"How long will that take us?" Veronica was a bit alarmed. "I'm kinda hungry."

"Oh, we're not going that far today. We're almost there, in fact."

"How can you tell, we're in the middle of the —_hey!" _Something caught Veronica's eye over the tree tops in the east. "is that..?"

"Yep." Logan shot her a grin as they came around a curve that gave them a clear view of the red letters spelling "Twins" rising above the trees. "Target Field, dead ahead."

"What are we, two miles from home? I knew we weren't far from downtown but…_wow."_

"The ball park is right on the western edge of downtown. Oakland is in town tonight. I thought we'd check it out."

"I haven't been to a baseball game in years." She said.

"Well, the park only opened in April. It's supposed to be one of the nicest fields in the country. I thought it would be fun to catch some of the game and have a beer or two."

"But every game's been sold out since the opener in April. How are you gonna get us in?"

"Trust me."

"Are they scalping tickets on Craig's list, now?"

"If I said 'yes', would you have to arrest me?"

"You could probably buy my silence with a hot dog."

"I didn't find a scalper."

"Well, if you think you can take me to a ball game and not spring for dogs, think again, Smarty pants."

In a few minutes, they were taking a ramp off the bike path toward the streets around the new ball park. There were plenty of bike racks for baseball fans who biked in from all over the metro area. The nearby parking ramp was filling with cars and the streets and sidewalks were crowded with fans swarming toward the park. They locked their bikes up near the field and joined the throng.

When they reached the plaza outside the park, Logan nodded toward several huge bronze statues of players.

"Check out the immortals." He said. "I'll buy you a dog if you can tell me who they are."

"Easy peasy lemon squeezy." She grinned. He looked skeptical. "Harmon Killebrew and Kirby Puckett. And I want a dog _and _a brew."

"How did you know that?" he was impressed.

"Psshhh. Who doesn't know that?" she looked around at the crowd. "Seriously, how are you gonna get us in?"

"Trust me." He found the box office. There were several people in front of the 'will call' window but no one in front of the ticket window. He spoke briefly to the gal behind the window and in a moment returned to Veronica and handed her a ticket. They joined the crowd moving toward the turnstiles.

"Remind me never to doubt your uncanny ability to get whatever you want." She said, frowning at him. "Are you gonna tell me how you pulled this off, or not?"

"What do you mean? I asked for a ticket and she sold me one."

"But every game's a sell out. People have been talking about it all summer."

"Every seat has been sold since pre-season." Logan corrected her. "We don't have seats. Check your ticket."

Veronica looked at the slip in her hand. Sure enough, there was no seat number to be found.

"They started selling standing room only." Logan told her. "They sell a couple hundred of these every game but not everyone knows about it."

"How did _you_ know about it?"

"My vast network of spies."

"You stopped by and asked on that bike ride you took the other day, didn't you?"

"Ask and ye shall receive. Isn't that what the good book says?"

"You're scaring me with all this Bible thumpin' you've been doing today."

"I feel good about it. I think the Twins are on a hot streak."

They presented their tickets and in a moment were inside Target Field, standing on a large plaza overlooking a jewel of a ball field. The new park had a very small footprint with tiers of seats rising steeply above the diamond, open to the clear blue sky, surrounded by the blue towers of downtown Minneapolis. Several indoor decks graced different levels of the park, including one club with a large, red Budweiser sign above it. Higher than the Budweiser sign rose the huge scoreboard and hi-def jumbotron, above which floated the Twins sign that Veronica had seen from the bike path far below.

"This is _beautiful."_ She said. "I feel like we've stumbled into some kind of parallel universe."

"How so?" Logan was looking all around.

"A block and a half away, we were on a bike path, alone in the middle of the woods yet here we are; surrounded by tens of thousands of major league baseball fans and skyscrapers. From those seats," she gestured to the seats on the western edge of the park, "we could spit onto the path we just left. Two very different places, occupying the same space and time. Parallel universes."

"You really miss Mac and Wallace, don't you?" He asked. "Let's check this place out."

They started with a quick look into the large gift shop just to the right of the entrance gate. Not interested in buying Twins apparel or MLB memorabilia, they didn't spend much time in there. Veronica was more interested in the view of downtown from the full glass walls of the shop. Back outside, they wandered the concourse, up one level then down another. There were food kiosks offering everything from ball park franks to fifteen dollar steak sandwiches. Killebrew root beer was everywhere. Logan bought them beers and they continued exploring. Unobstructed views from every corner of the park and the jumbotron hovering over center field made it easy to see the game while people watching everywhere. They stopped whenever they found empty seats but eventually the ticket holders would arrive and politely request that they move.

"Josh has a box," Logan said after a while. "We could hang out there if you want."

"No." she shook her head. "That's like watching from home. I like being out here with all the normal people, not shut up in a box like we're something special." She looked at him. "Do _you_ want to watch the game from a private box?"

"Not me. I've always enjoyed mingling with the common folk. They can't...smell fear, can they?"

"Come on." she grabbed his arm and pulled him down the concourse. "We're going to the peanut gallery."

"We've had our shots, right?" he asked.

* * *

Eventually they made their way to the top tier over right field. They found a pair of empty seats at the front rail and Veronica sat while Logan went to get them something to eat.

Veronica stretched her legs out and closed her eyes briefly, enjoying the sun on her face. Most of the seats around her were filled with people her own age; lots of young men and a few couples. They all seemed to be having a terrific time and if Veronica weren't familiar with the weird camaraderie of fans, she would have thought they all knew each other. She smiled, remembering Padre games with her dad and the instant friendships he'd struck up at the ball park.

She opened her eyes and sat up as the stands around her erupted in cheers. A quick look at the field assured her that she hadn't missed a home run but a double play by the home town team. She couldn't help but to laugh at the glee the fans around her took in the outs.

"Well played, Mauer!" shouted a young man standing near the railing next to her. He was wearing a Twins jersey with the number 33 on it.

"I actually blinked and missed it," she said. "Did Mauer help?"

"No, not really." He said. "It's just…the ad. You know? 'Well played, Mauer'?"

"Uh. No." she shook her head as the jumbotron filled with the serious face of a commentator, saying in a deadpan voice; "Well played, Mauer."

Veronica met the eyes of number 33 and they both laughed.

"It's a catch phrase." He shrugged. "Is this your first time to the park?"

"Yes," she nodded. "I actually have a standing room only ticket but I'm poaching this seat till it's rightful owner shows up."

"You a baseball fan?" 33 leaned on the railing and grinned at her.

"Well, I kind of was when I was a kid. My Dad bleeds Padre blue but I haven't paid much attention in years."

"Us Twins fans have been stuck in the Metro Dome for decades, which sucked. Now that baseball is outside again, it's the greatest thing that's ever happened in Minnesota."

"Didn't the Twins win two World Series in the Dome?"

"Yeah but that was like, a million years ago." he dismissed ancient history with the wave of his hand. " I was only in second grade the last time they won the Series. My Dad took me to a game but all I really remember is the noise. I'd rather watch a game here than get to the Series every year in that barn. Baseball indoors is an abomination."

"You and my Dad would get along." Veronica laughed. Just then, she caught sight of Logan, at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the nosebleed seats. He was carrying a tray with food but had stopped at the stairway and was chatting with a very pretty woman with blond hair and a deep cut tank top. From where she sat, Veronica could see acres of cleavage.

"Hey, don't worry; we'll get the third out, Mauer will knock out a couple of homers and we'll win this thing." 33 said, misunderstanding the sudden frown that crossed her face. "Too bad Morneau's injured. He's our best hitter."

"Hmm?" Veronica barely heard him as she watched Logan smile at the pretty blond. Plastering a smile onto her face, she looked at 33 and asked "Who?"

He went into a dissertation about Justin Morneau but Veronica only pretended to listen as she kept one eye on the couple at the foot of the stairs. She let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding as the girl laughed and Logan turned from her and started up the stairs. He looked up and their eyes met and she felt a genuine smile cross her face as he grinned and held up the tray of food he was bringing her. Her smile faltered briefly as she saw the woman behind Logan turn and watch him climb the stairs. Veronica wished she still had a beer so she could indulge her overwhelming urge to throw it at the busty blond checking out her husband's ass as he climbed the stadium stairs.

"What'd you bring me?" she called as soon as Logan got within earshot. He cast a look at the young man still going on about Morneau, whose monologue finally faltered as he noticed Logan.

"Excuse me," Logan said, smiling cheerfully and sliding past 33 to the seat beside Veronica. "My wife gets cranky if I don't feed her regularly."

"Yeah, she does!" Veronica said, eyeing the tray. "What do we have?"

"Kramarczuk's" the suddenly crestfallen young man said, glancing at Logan's tray.

"It's something called 'bratwurst' and it's supposed to be pretty good." Logan handed Veronica a tray with an oversized sausage covered in sauerkraut and mustard on a bun.

"You've never had a brat?" 33's eyes flared wide. "Where are you guys from, Mars?"

"Yes." Logan said, as though that were a stupid question.

"Wow." 33 grinned and leaned against the rail. "This, I gotta see."

"What?" Veronica frowned at him. "you're gonna watch us eat?"

"No, man. I'm gonna watch you eat your first _Kramarczuk's brat_."

"Dude, you make it sound like porn." Logan said.

"Take a bite." 33 urged with a leer. "just take a bite and then _you_ tell _me_."

"Now I feel self conscious and worried about my performance." Logan frowned at his dinner.

Veronica took a bite.

"Oh. My. God." She said with her mouth full. Logan and 33 watched as her eyes rolled back in her head and her lids fluttered closed. She swallowed, sighed and slowly opened her eyes.

"That," she said in a low, breathless voice, "Was the best thing I've ever had in my mouth."

"Great." Logan looked forlornly at his dinner. "Now I'm _really _self conscious."

"Pretty good, huh?" 33 nodded. Logan glanced up at him.

"Dude. If you think I'm gonna let you stand there and watch my wife eat a brat, I may have to kick your ass."

"Yeah!" 33 laughed. "_I would. _I think I'd better go get my own. You're in my seat, by the way."

"I'll keep it warm till you get back." Logan finally picked up his own brat when 33 was half way down the stairs. He looked at Veronica who was clearly revelling in her dinner.

Veronica was determined to say nothing about the busty blond Logan had been talking and smiling with but the moment she finished her brat, the words "So…I see you're busy making new friends." Popped out of her mouth.

"Me?" Logan took another bite of his brat. "I'm not the one he was hitting on."

"Hitting-? I..What? He wasn't hitting on me!"

"I swear," Logan shook his head. "I leave you alone for one minute, to get us something to eat, no less and I come back to find you flirting up a storm with Justin Morneau's biggest fan."

"I…he… I wasn't _flirting."_

"It's that minuscule ring you insisted on. If you were wearing the rock I picked out, he would have been way too intimidated to pick you up. Never underestimate the importance of a great diamond." he nodded toward the field, as though that made his point. He took her left hand in his. "A diamond on a woman's hand says more about the man who gave it to her than it does about her." He rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand. "This one says 'loser; may as well take a shot'."

"I love my ring. Maybe I should get 'Property of Logan' tattooed across my ass." she said, pulling her hand out of his.

"Don't be silly. No one would see it there." He was satisfied to see the flash of a smile she quickly suppressed. "You would have let him watch you eat that whole brat, wouldn't you?" he heaved a melodramatic sigh. "Is nothing sacred?"

"We were just talking." she said in a small voice, trying not to laugh.

"_You_ were just talking. _He_ was flirting." He popped the last bite of his brat into his mouth.

"You can't blame me for what he was doing." She pointed out.

"No," he looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "That wouldn't be fair, would it? We'd better get out of his seat before he comes back. He might expect you to watch _him_ eat a brat."

* * *

They continued exploring the ball park, winding their way back down to the large plaza where they had entered. They hadn't planned on staying for the whole game but were having so much fun that before they knew it, they were celebrating a 2-0 victory with the rest of the Twins' fans. Mauer had gotten three hits including an RBI in the eighth that clinched the win.

It was an exuberant crowd that flowed back into the streets of downtown Minneapolis at dusk. Veronica and Logan walked hand in hand toward the rack where their bikes were locked.

"Darn." She said as Logan unlocked their bikes. "I wish we had gotten a couple of those brats to go. Those were delicious."

"Best thing I've ever had in _my _mouth." Logan agreed.

"Honestly?" she said as she mounted her bike and took off. "Second best thing I've had in mine."

"Are you just saying that to make me feel good about myself?" he asked as he caught up to her at the light.

"Not at all." She smiled as the light turned green.

"Well, it's totally working." He followed her down to the bike trail.

* * *

Much later that night, Logan was down in the kitchen getting a drink of water. He put the cold water carafe back in the fridge and was about to hit the light when the back door opened. He turned in surprise to see JR standing there. Logan raised his eyebrows in a silent question which JR answered with a single word.

"Chicago."

to be continued...


	15. Chapter 15 Operation Ahole

Chapter 15 Operation A**hole

"Keith Mars."

"Hey, Dad. Whatcha doin?" Veronica smiled when her father picked up the phone.

"Veronica. You sound happy." Keith grinned at the sound of his daughter's voice.

"I am happy, Dad. How about you? How's life in the sordid underbelly of the beast known as Neptune?"

"Oh, it's great. Infidelity, divorce, embezzlement, insurance fraud, bail jumpers…nothing but the good life around here."

"Anything particularly juicy lately?"

"Not really. I just closed a case in which a woman was convinced her husband was cheating on her with her own sister and in the end it turned out the sister was merely helping him plan an elaborate 50th birthday party for her."

"Aw, that's so sweet!"

"Yeah. At the party, the wife announced she was leaving her husband for his brother."

"NO."

"Turns out the whole thing was a massive case of projection."

"Or wishful thinking."

"Cliff bet me five dollars that the husband and sister hook up by year's end."

"Did you take it?"

"No. I work too hard for my money to make sucker bets with Cliff. How's everything in the City of Lakes?"

"Things are great. It's hot. Really hot. And it's so humid _my _hair is curling. Well, it's almost curling. Well, it looked like it almost thought about curling for a few minutes the other day. Whatever; it's sticky. Air conditioning is proof that there is a God and He loves us."

"That's what you'll be saying about central heat in a few months. How's everything else? Work? House? Making any new friends? I always ask you that and I always think I'm going to get a different answer."

"Actually, we have met some people we kind of get a kick out of."

She told her Dad about Logan allowing Candy to drop by more than once and that there were some people at the FBI she was considering introducing to Logan and finally about the estate sale with Marla. She told Keith about the furniture and how the house was coming along. From there, they moved on to her work.

"Something's brewing Dad but I don't know exactly what it is. It's really frustrating, not knowing what the big picture is. They've got us digging pretty deeply into the back grounds of about three dozen people. Once we've uncovered all the dots, I'm hoping we can connect them but we're still laying the ground work for whatever it is. It's weird, Dad; I feel like I'm a cog in a huge, intricate watch and I'm…I'm..."

"You're what?" Keith prompted.

"Well, I'm used to being the whole watch!"

Keith laughed and reminded Veronica that she was part of a national operation, now.

"You can't expect to be in charge of things, yet; you're a rookie agent who has yet to prove herself. I'm sure with your background and natural abilities, you'll rise quickly. You'll probably be heading up investigations in just a few years. "

"Years?" she sighed. "I guess I can wait. I just wish they'd let me out of the bullpen. Background checks have always been our meat and potatoes but I prefer doing them as a change of pace, not as a nine to five job."

"Sometimes, that's all there is to be done; you know that. How's Logan? He's settling in to things there okay?"

"He loves it here. I thought he'd miss the ocean more but he seems to be adjusting to lake life just fine. He and JR flew to Chicago today."

"Chigaco? Why?"

"You remember that Lynne left her art collection to Logan? Most of it went up in smoke with the house but apparently she had lent a few pieces out, so they were saved. Since Logan had nowhere to put them, this gallery in Chicago has kept them for years. So, they took the jet. They'll be home sometime before dawn."

"Why didn't you go?"

"Oh, he invited me but they don't expect to be home till the wee hours and I've got work in the morning. Also, I've got too much to do to take a day trip right now. I'm setting up a photography studio at home."

"Oh, honey! That's great. I'm glad you're taking pictures again; you're so talented."

"Thanks, Dad! Coming from you, that means almost nothing. The upside is I'm very excited about it but the downside is…"

"There's a downside?"

"I'm…please tell me if you think I'm crazy, but I'm worried about Logan. I don't know what he'll do when the weather changes."

"The weather? You've completely lost me."

"Right now he spends his days surfing, biking and golfing, when he's not keeping tabs on our finances. He says that's a full time job and I'm sure he's right. Before we got married, did he happen to tell you how much he's worth?"

"As any father, considering bestowing his daughter's hand would, we had that conversation. I don't know a specific number, but I was satisfied that he can support you in the manner to which you've become accustomed. He can keep you in macaroni and cheese for the next…seven thousand years."

"Yeah." She chuckled. "He certainly doesn't need a job for the income but I wish he would find something he loves to do besides play games. It's great that he has time for all that fun stuff _now, _but what happens when we're under ten feet of snow? Which to tell you the truth is unimaginable right now. I'm telling you, Dad it's gorgeous, the sky is a ridiculous shade of blue and it's _hot._ But in a few months, he won't be able to do those things. I have this recurring nightmare where he spends all his time playing video games."

"I think he'll find more things to fill up his time."

"You laugh, Dad but this is Logan. He doesn't have school to keep him busy any more. When he gets bored he does things like set up bum fights and score drugs in Mexico."

"That was a long time ago."

"I know. I know he's not that spoiled kid anymore. But he needs more to occupy his time than just watching his fortune grow. Taking care of the money is more of an obligation than a career. I'm so excited about getting back to photography that it's made me wish he would find something he was passionate about doing."

"I'm pretty sure he has, honey." Keith chuckled.

"_Dad!" _Veronica looked at the phone in surprise. _Boy, being married has certainly brought about one significant change in our relationship!_

"What?" Keith's laughter boomed. "I just meant I don't think you have to worry about Logan getting bored. Although, it's interesting that that's where your mind went first."

"Oh. Yeah. Well." Veronica dropped her forehead in her hand, embarrassed. She was glad her father couldn't see her blushing. "He's so smart, Dad. There are so many things he could do."

"He'll find his thing, Veronica. What's the rush? I think he's doing pretty well, all things considered. You both have had more to deal with than most people, just trying to survive to adulthood. I'm proud of you. I'm proud of both of you."

"Thanks, Dad." She sighed. "I can't wait to see you. We just bought a bed for your room. Three weeks till Labor Day. Are you excited?"

"To come see my only daughter in her new lake shore mansion? Naw, I could take it or leave it."

"Yeah, I'll bet you could."

"I'll be there in eighteen days, three hours and...forty two minutes. See? I'm counting them."

* * *

Logan and JR had boarded the private jet in mid afternoon. They had no luggage but JR's briefcase and planned to return to Minneapolis as soon as their business in Chicago was completed.

The flight was very short. In a private jet, without having to deal with luggage, security or crowds, the entire trip was well under an hour.

JR checked his equipment the moment they were in the air.

"We could both have flown first class for a fraction of what this is costing me." Logan griped.

"That would take three times as long and what would I have done with this?" JR lifted his pant leg, revealing the gun strapped there. "Our names not showing up on any flight manifest is the least of the reasons we can't fly commercial."

"You brought it? For this? What do you think is gonna happen?" Logan asked.

"I don't know. You want to guarantee I won't need it?"

"At an art auction?"

"It's better to have it and never need it than vice versa." JR said.

"You don't have to tell me that." Logan knew firsthand what it was like to need a gun and not have one.

"I don't expect to need it. Not on this job."

"Should I have brought one?"

"You could have." JR shrugged. "Once you get your carry permit, I think you should bring it everywhere. We need to establish that as part of your persona. You never know…"

"Whatever." Logan looked out the window. JR nodded. He was one of the few people on earth who knew what Logan was capable of with a firearm.

"What did you tell Mars?" JR suddenly asked. He was a bit surprised that they had gotten away so easily.

"I told her the truth." Logan said, innocently. "We're flying to Chicago to pick up some paintings that my Mom left me. I didn't mention any side trips that may crop up."

"Pretty risky, inviting her along."

"No it wasn't. My part in this is completely on the up and up. She didn't ask me what you'll be doing while I'm not buying art."

"I still think you should tell her."

"I'm not supposed to." Logan frowned. "You know that."

"Fuck that. She's your wife."

"I'll tell her eventually. It may not have occurred to you that I'm being tested but it's crossed my mind. You know as well as I do that I'm considered the weak link in this set up." Logan got up and poured himself a drink at the mini bar. "I don't want to mess things up before we even get started because I couldn't keep my mouth shut."

"I know. You're right." JR sighed. "It probably is a test. But she'll find out because she always finds shit out. And if you don't tell her first, she's gonna be pissed."

"I know." Logan dropped back into his seat and put his feet up on the table in front of him.

"Doesn't that bother you?" JR demanded. He was scared to death of Pissed Off Veronica.

"Not really." Logan sipped his drink and grinned. Fear was not the emotion Pissed Off Veronica engendered in him.

"Just warn me when she does…" JR said, snapping a photo of Logan with his phone. He checked the digital image then emailed the photo to Veronica. "…so I can duck and cover."

"Her bite's much worse than her bark." Logan acknowledged with a smile.

"Maybe you shouldn't be drinking." JR said, frowning at the scotch in Logan's hand.

"Logan Echolls drinks."

"Okay, then…" JR said absently, waiting for a return message. When Veronica's text appeared, he smiled, turned off his phone and slipped it back in his pocket. "All systems go." He looked at Logan. "Have you figured out how we're gonna work this?"

"Yep."

"Good." JR leaned back in his seat. "Get me in the door and I'll take it from there."

* * *

Less than an hour later, they were in a cab headed into downtown Chicago. They were on their way to the Oxborough Gallery.

Before they landed, Logan had opened the briefcase and taken out a black leather box. He unlocked it and flipped back the lid revealing an assortment of men's fine jewelry and accessories. He slipped a Pasha XL chronograph by Cartier onto his wrist, then a simple gold chain around his neck. He ignored the falcon eye cuff links but dropped a slim, monogrammed leather case holding sunglasses into the breast pocket of his unbleached linen sport coat, followed by a gold plated Cartier pen, a tiny leather bound notebook, a black lacquer lighter with gold trim, a silk, monogrammed pocket square and a gold plated cigar cutter. He removed his wedding band and slipped it onto the third finger of his right hand.

In a matter of seconds, he had upgraded the worth of his outfit by nearly seventy thousand dollars. He picked up a gold ring, carved to look like a panther, winced at it and tossed it back into the box.

"Where are the cigars?" he asked, looking through the pockets of the case.

"What about the ring?" JR demanded.

"What about it? Where are the cigars?"

"That cost $8,000.00." JR said. "It denotes a strong, seductive character. You're not going to wear it?"

"It's stupid. Send it back."

"I thought you'd like it."

"I don't. Where are …oh." Logan found the sleeve of Romeo y Julietas in another pocket of the briefcase. "I actually prefer Cohibas, but these are good."

"Are you sure you understand your part in this?" JR asked, watching him clip the end off a cigar and light up.

"Of course." Logan said, drawing on the stogie and grinning at him. "Unlike you, padawan, I've done this before."

* * *

JR paid the fare when the cab pulled up in front of the gallery, then jumped out and came around to open the door for Logan, who stepped out onto the curb. He emanated the same kind of charisma his father the movie star had possessed. A few passersby looked at them, curiously.

JR noticed all of this. Logan paid no attention but slipped his two thousand dollar sunglasses onto his face and patted JR on the shoulder.

"Worry not," he said with a smirk. "This is a part I was born to play."

Side by side, Logan in his pale, summer weight jacket and JR in a dark, well tailored suit, they looked like exactly what they were; a wealthy young celebrity and his assistant. They stood at the bottom of the broad concrete steps, staring up at the faux classical building.

"Well," JR squared his shoulders. "Let 'Operation Asshole' commence."

Logan slowly turned his head and looked at his henchman. "Operation Asshole? That's what you're calling it?"

"Yeah. Can you think of a better name?"

Logan stared at him for a beat.

"No, that's perfect." He said, and bounded up the steps.

* * *

Joanne McKnight looked up when the doors of her gallery opened and she smiled. She knew it was him the moment he strolled through her door, looking as though he owned the place. He could only be the son of two movie stars. She had been expecting this visit for five years.

"Mr. Logan Echolls," she said, gliding across the hard wood floors, hands outstretched in greeting. "How lovely to finally meet you."

"Ms. McKnight?" he asked, coming to a halt in the middle of the gallery.

"Please, call me Joanne." She said, coming up to him. "I feel as though I've known you my whole life."

"Ah," he pocketed his sunglasses and glanced around the gallery. "If I had a dollar for every time I met someone who felt like they'd known me my whole life…oh wait," Joanne suddenly found herself pinned by a pair of sharp brown eyes. "I do."

Caught off guard by his answer, Joanne blinked but recovered quickly. "I suppose you do hear that tediously often, don't you?" she smiled. "Forgive my presumption. I am Joanne McKnight and I'm very pleased to meet you." She offered her hand a second time.

"Logan Echolls." He took her hand in his, inclined his head toward her and smiled.

Joanne's initial impression that he had his father's famous presence but lacked the stunning beauty of either of his parents underwent a revision when he smiled. He may not have his father's looks but his smile held the same seductive charm.

"Your mother was a great favorite of mine." Joanne said.

"She was a favorite of mine, too." Mr. Echolls said, "Right up until the moment she threw herself off the Coronado Bridge. I disagreed with that choice."

"We were all heartbroken when we heard."

"Heartbroken. Really." He looked around at the paintings on the walls again. "I believe you have a few of her pieces?"

"I do. Lynne frequently brought pieces to me for reframing. We so often agreed on what best set off a particular work; she trusted me. I had two of her paintings when she died. I was informed by her estate that she left her entire collection to her only son. I knew that eventually, you would come for them." Joanne had spent a long and successful career gauging the interest of prospective art buyers. As she spoke, she carefully noted the way Mr. Echolls' eyes skimmed the pieces in her gallery. His glance slid over the walls and pedestals, catching on nothing; not a canvas or sculpture drew his attention. He had the look of a man who was not hungry, surveying a table full of unappetizing food.

"You don't like my current show, do you?" she smiled.

"I'm sure it's all very important and edgy," Mr. Echolls replied. "I just don't see anything I'd want to look at every day."

"Your mother's paintings are in my office. If you'll follow me, please?" she turned and led him toward the office at the back of the large well lit space. "You realize, of course that you have an advantage over most art patrons; you grew up surrounded by stunning masterworks. Your mother's collection isn't large but every piece in it is important." She opened her office door and invited him through it.

"Please sit." She indicated the beautiful but uncomfortable sofa in her office. "Would you like a drink?"

"Scotch." He answered, sitting."JR will get it." He indicated his man, who stood just inside the door.

"Please, allow me." Joanne took a crystal tumbler out of her side board and poured a shot of Highland Park, then turned and handed it to him with a smile."After we spoke this morning, I retrieved your mother's paintings from storage. I can assure you we take very good care of our stored works."

Joanne approached the two easels she had set up in her office. Each held a painting, draped in black silk. She removed the drapes from them and frowned. They were clearly works that Lynne had bought in her early days as a collector. She stood aside to let Mr. Echolls view his paintings.

She expected him to be as nonplused as she was; these two paintings really didn't fit in with the rest of Lynn Echoll's exemplary collection of contemporary paintings.

Joanne was pleased to see that she guessed correctly; young Mr. Echolls was clearly stunned. His face went blank and he stood up off the couch and walked forward to get a better look at the two paintings.

"Are you sure these are the right ones? My Mom bought these?" he asked.

"Quite sure." Joanne nodded, looking at the two framed paintings. One was an oil study of a catamaran on a tropical beach and the other a watercolor of fishing boats tied to a pier on Key West. "I have no idea where she got them but Lynn loved these two. She was just beginning her education in the art world so it's easy to see how she was swayed to buy such pieces. They are both exceptionally fine examples of classical impressionism but such works aren't considered terribly important in the art world today."

"My Mom loved the water." Mr. Echolls murmured, as though talking to himself.

"Then I guess it's natural that she would be drawn to these. They're lovely paintings but hardly in keeping with the rest of her collection. Your father helped her to develop her taste."

"My father?" Mr. Echolls turned and looked at her, one eyebrow raised.

"Oh, yes." Joanne said. "He exposed her to more contemporary artists; works that pushed boundaries. Important artists, not just the sort who paint…pretty pictures."

To her shock, Mr. Echolls cursed under his breath, downed the last bit of his scotch, then turned and threw the crystal glass against the far wall of her office. She flinched as it shattered against the wall. His assistant scurried to clean up the mess but Joanne turned stunned eyes on the furious young man as he paced her office. He turned and looked at the two paintings and for an instant, his face was wrung with anguish, quickly replaced by anger.

"Did you know that my house burned to the ground less than a year after my Mother died?" He demanded.

"No."

"_Everything_ was lost. I never took possession of her collection; it was ashes before I turned eighteen."

"My God." Joanne gasped.

"Yes. Everything my f-Father helped her choose is gone."

"I'm so _sorry_." She said and her hand crept to her throat. "That is a…a _monumental _loss!" She looked at the two sunlit paintings. "Then these are all that are left of your mother's collection?"

"Yeah. Like you said; they're hardly indicative of it."

"Were…were you hoping to use these as a starting point to rebuild?" she asked.

He nodded, running his hands through his hair. "It was fully insured. It seemed like a good way to…honor her memory; to continue to support…"

"Yes." Joanne nodded. "Yes. Of course."

"Excuse me, is there a waste basket, or…" Mr. Echolls' assistant had gathered up the larger shards of the crystal tumbler.

"Behind the desk." Joanne pointed, never taking her eyes off Mr. Echolls. "You know, if you're serious about rebuilding, there is a private pre-showing of a fabulous collection being held tonight. It's invitation only but I could make a phone call."

"Really?" Mr. Echolls stopped his distraught pacing. "Tonight?"

"My friend's gallery is not too far from here. Would you like me to make that call?"

"Please."

"I'd be more than happy…please; make yourself comfortable. I'll be right back." She placed her hand on Mr. Echolls' arm and led him back to the sofa. "Oh, leave that." She said to his man. "My janitor will take care of it." Then she smiled at Mr. Echolls and left him, staring at the remnants of his mother's art collection.

She went into a small office down the hall. This was where she did most of her real work. The large office was mostly for schmoozing wealthy would-be patrons of the arts. She went to the desk and pulled up her rolodex.

"Jacques? It's Joanne. I'm lovely, how are you? Ready for your show tonight? About that…I've got someone here you _really_ want to have at your gallery tonight. No, you'll never guess…Mr. Logan Echolls. Yes. _Yes! _Not only does he want to continue his Mother's patronage, he wants to rebuild…yes, Yes! In a _fire! _Well, for heaven's sake, why didn't _I _know that? Well, his mother's taste was impeccable. You could probably talk him into buying whomever you're touting as the next great thing…all it takes is a single million dollar sale and you've got yourself a new Emerging Master. _Yes_ss. Thank you, Jacques darling! Oh, he's got his man with him, so make it two. I promise you, Jacques; you owe me _big_."

She rang off and left the small office with a smile. Back in the large office, she found Mr. Echolls standing front of the two paintings.

"Here's the time and address." Joanne handed Mr. Echolls a note. "My friend, Jacques Stewart is the curator. He's expecting you. I think you'll be very pleased with what he's offering tonight."

"Thank you." Mr. Echolls never took his eyes off the paintings as she handed him the address but handed it immediately to his man, saying "Get us a car." His assistant took the directions and left the office, pulling out his phone. Mr. Echolls waved his hand at his mother's paintings. "I'll take these today. Thank you for taking care of them for me."

"It was my pleasure. I'll have them wrapped for delivery."

* * *

Several hours later Logan and JR were in the back of the hired car, on their way to the airfield, where the jet was waiting to take them home.

In the back of the limo with the privacy window up, Logan leaned his head back and closed his eyes. JR climbed into the seat across from his boss, the two wrapped paintings safe beside him. He looked at Logan, sprawled in the back seat.

"You're a _dick!" _JR said in an awestruck tone.

"It really is like riding a bike." Logan grinned and opened his eyes. "But it's exhausting."

"Is that how you—is that what—is – I heard stories but-were you like that _all the time_?" JR couldn't get over the performance he had just witnessed.

"No, I wasn't like that _all_ the time," Logan said, defensively. "Just when I was…you know…_awake_."

JR stared at him with a half smile on his face, as though he was looking at an unimaginably exotic animal. "_Why?" _He finally asked.

"You're the psych major; you tell me." Logan sighed and closed his eyes again.

"That was—I think you ruined my suit." JR rubbed futilely at the front of his wet jacket. "The shirt and tie are a complete loss."

"Whatever." Logan mumbled.

"That was a _forty dollar_ tie!"

"Then what are you whining for?" Logan looked at him, genuinely puzzled.

Realizing that a forty dollar tie meant something completely different to his employer than it did to him, JR dropped it. _Note to self; stock up on cheap, disposable ties._ "I can't believe you threw that at me." He said, shaking his head.

"I threw it underhand; you should have caught it."

"It was a glass of red wine!"

"I can't believe you didn't laugh when it hit you."

"You laughed!"

"Hmmm," Logan smiled at the memory. "That second drink you brought me was perfect."

"Ice water with olives. That's what you're getting from now on."

"Genius."

"I'm not a complete moron…But you—you were-" JR shook his head, "I've known two year olds who behave better in public!"

"You should see me when I'm actually drunk." Logan chuckled. "No, I take that back; I'm a fun drunk."

"That wasn't fun?"

"_That_ was a blast."

"How in the world did we not get thrown out of there?" JR marveled. "I thought that guy was gonna shit when you told him to call you if he ever got his hands on anything that didn't look like it came out an elephant's butt."

"I actually said 'the rectum of a syphillitic yak' but 'elephant's butt' works too. Let that be a lesson, padawan; people will put up with all sorts of crazy when they think you're about to write them a check for several hundred thousand dollars."

"Or that woman, when you shut her up by telling her she had Ray Charles' eye for composition!"

"I would have given her a million dollars if she could _spell _'arabesque', much less define it."

"What did you do about the guy who kept complaining about your cigar?"

"Oh, I put it out."

"You did?"

"Yeah! Then he wouldn't shut up about what I had done to his glass of wine. Some people are impossible to please."

"You are _really _good at this." JR conceded.

"Are you? Did you get what you needed?"

"Yep. That reminds me," JR pressed the button to lower his window and when it was halfway down, he pitched his cell phone into the dark and rolled the window back up.

"Isn't that risky?" Logan asked.

"Nah. I flushed the SIM card as soon as I sent the jpgs." JR assured him. "Mission accomplished."

"Good. I'm wiped out." Logan closed his eyes again.

"I'm not! I'm totally pumped!"

"Why would you be tired?" Logan demanded. "All you had to do was sneak around while I sucked all the air out of the room."

"You know, I'll bet if we asked every single person there tonight, not one of them could describe me." JR laughed. "I'll bet two thirds of them wouldn't even remember I was there."

"You're welcome. Now please, be quiet."

"I mean, even the wine; they remember you throwing it but I'll bet not one of them remembers who it hit."

"You're the Invisible man."

"I'm the Invisible man, uh huh; I'm the Invisible man; Incredible how you can…_see right through me!"_ JR sang in his best Freddy Mercury, which wasn't very good at all.

"Could you try being the inaudible man for a while?"

"I'm so keyed up! I feel like I could run all the way to the air port!"

"Would you like to try?" Logan asked, sweetly.

JR didn't answer. He'd seen enough tonight to take Logan's ridiculous threat seriously.

* * *

Logan had barely dozed off when they reached the airport. JR gave him a shake and they gathered the briefcase and both wrapped paintings and boarded the jet. They would touch down in Minneapolis by 2:00 a.m.

As the plane left the ground, Logan looked at the two packages they had brought. He picked up the larger and ripped off the brown paper, then set the painting on the seat across from him so he could look at it.

"I never thought your old man was much of an actor," JR said. "But I totally bought that you were pissed about these paintings."

"I wasn't acting." Logan said softly. He picked up the second painting and pulled the wrapping off of it, as well.

"You don't like these?" JR asked. "I think they're _gorgeous."_

"I love these." Logan replied, sadly. JR looked at him, a deep v between his brows.

"My Mom loved the water." Logan said. "She loved boats. She loved art. She chose these a long time ago, not because they were _important," _he spit out the word as though it tasted bad, "not as an investment or to show off how sophisticated she was but because she _loved _them. And then Aaron stuck his nose in it. He 'introduced her to contemporary artists' whose work was _important _because it _pushed boundaries._ In other words, he made her feel stupid for liking 'pretty pictures'. I grew up surrounded by shit that looked like someone dipped two monkeys in paint and let them fuck all over the canvas. No wonder she jumped in the bay. He ruined everything she loved."

JR looked at the paintings. Then he looked at Logan, slumped in his seat, staring sadly at the art his mom had chosen when love had been her only standard.

_Not everything. _JR thought.

to be continued...


	16. Chapter 16 Chatter

Chapter 16 Chatter

It was past 2:30 a.m. when Logan pulled the Ferrari into the garage. JR was finally starting to come down from his adrenaline high. He had offered to drive them home from the airport but Logan had simply glared at him.

"Fine, stay in douche bag mode," JR had mumbled, not quite under his breath, then louder "If you fall asleep at the wheel, I'm telling Mars. Assuming I survive the crash, that is."

"You won't." Logan said.

JR wasn't sure if he meant 'you won't tell Veronica' or 'you won't survive' but he didn't ask. No more was said on the ride home.

Logan didn't fall asleep at the wheel but did begin to peel off his clothes as he walked across the yard. He dropped his jacket on the floor just inside the back door, stepped out of his shoes somewhere in the kitchen, peeled off his socks at the bottom of the stairs, his shirt at the landing and stepped out of his pants at the top. By the time he fell into bed and reached for Veronica, he was in nothing but his boxers. He found her sound asleep on the far side of the wide mattress and curled himself around her.

"Mmmm…hey." She murmured, not quite waking up. "You're home."

"Yeah." He sighed, kissing her neck. "Quit hoggin' the bed."

"How was Chicago?"

"S'okay. I brought you something I think you'll like."

"Did you?" She rolled over to face him.

"Not there!" he caught his breath as she touched him. "Ronnie, I'm wiped out. Go back to sleep."

"I missed you."

"Good…catch me in the morning."

"I have to get up in three hours. And you woke me up _now_…"

"No, I didn't." he kissed her forehead. "You're still asleep. Shhhh."

"If I'm asleep then this must be a dream." She smiled, letting her hands wander. "How good a dream _is _this?"

"Whoa, hey, stop it!" he laughed but rolled away from her. "V, I'm exhausted. Come on, I'm not a machine."

"No?" She followed him to the middle of the bed. "You're not my own little wind up toy?"

"Little?" He was trying, unsuccessfully, to keep her hands off of him.

"Well, not if I can help it and it's _my _dream, after all…"

"I just wanted to snuggle." He protested as she straddled him.

"You can snuggle in _your _dream," she said. "This one's mine."

Then she kissed him. Almost against his will, his arms went around her and he kissed her back.

"I hate to disappoint you, Babe but I'm…I…oh. Wait." He rolled over on top of her. "Turns out I _am_ a machine."

"Nah…" she ran her hands into his hair and pulled him close. "Not a machine; the man of my dreams."

* * *

Joanne McKnight had no sooner unlocked her gallery Monday morning when the phone in her office began to ring. She walked unhurriedly across the floor, dropped her purse on her desk and picked up.

"Oxborough Gallery." She said regally.

"Joanne, I thought we were friends." The voice on the other end said, peevishly.

"Jacques?"

"You knew how important last night was to me." His voice was quivering with suppressed emotion. "And you sent that—that _creature _to my reception! _How could you_?"

"What happened?"

"What happened? _What happened?_ That Hollywood…asshole….mother FUCKER squatted in the middle of my gallery and took a DUMP all over my show _and _my other guests!"

"Did he?"

"YES, he God damned most certainly DID! And he bought _nothing. _You practically promised he was worth millions to me."

"Well, you have to be patient." Joanne sighed. "That sort of behavior is typical of his set. You're so used to dealing with goons who are desperate to prove that they're high class that you've completely lost touch with how the actual Aristocracy comport themselves. Bad behavior is the equivalent of a cat, spraying to mark its territory."

"WHAT?"

"They need to be the center of attention, all the time. I guarantee you, the more outrageous Logan Echolls behaved, the more impressed he was by your show."

"Really?" Jacques sounded unconvinced.

"Yes." Joanne assured him firmly. "He didn't like mine and he was the model of propriety. Well, except for that one glass ..."

"Does he _always _throw things?"

"I don't know. Probably." Joanne sighed. "The important thing here is to let him know that you aren't flustered. Send him a thank you note for condescending to grace your unworthy gallery with his time and presence. He'll be impressed."

"I don't want to impress that spoiled little shit. I don't want him to ever set foot in my showroom again!"

"Oh, grow up!" Joanne snapped. "How do you expect to get hundreds of thousands of dollars out of someone for a canvas that looks like it was used to birth puppies on if you don't put up with some childish behavior? The entire point of our existence is to encourage these people in their sense of superiority and entitlement! If you can't do that, then you should probably close your gallery and go back to selling sofas at Gabberts!"

"He made two of my patrons cry. He told my assistant he could recommend a good plastic surgeon. He destroyed a two hundred dollar bottle of wine and he broke three Mikasa wine glasses because he wanted to sit on the table. He just…_swept _them to the floor."

"All of which will be more than paid for when he buys his first canvas from you. He must have been extremely impressed with your show."

"Really?"

"I've dealt with Hollywood people, Jacques. This is all very encouraging!"

"It is?"

"Oh, yes. Were you able to sell anything last night?"

"Well…yes. My clients didn't hold Mr. Echolls' behavior against me. I actually had a very good night."

"Congratulations!" Joanne smiled. "And they'll all be talking about this show and your gallery for years, thanks to Mr. Echolls. My goodness, Jacques! Your next show will be the 'must have' invite of the season! They'll all be hoping he shows up again! When it comes right down to it, there's not much difference between art patrons and NASCAR fans; everyone wants to witness a crash. I told you you'd owe me big!"

"Oh. Well. Do you…um…do you know where can I send a thank you note? I don't have any contact information on Mr. Echolls."

"Of course you don't!" Joanne laughed. "He wouldn't give rabble like us that information. Hold on, I'll get you the number of one of his accountants. He'll tell you where to send a note."

"Oh. Okay. Thank you, Joanne."

* * *

Special Agent Horatio Waletski walked into the Dunn Bros. Coffee shop on University and looked around. He spotted his old friend and section Chief sitting in a corner, facing the door and reading a Pioneer Press. Wally got some coffee and a muffin and went over and joined Chief Larson.

"The Twins are on a hot streak," Larson said as Wally sat down, his nose buried in the sports page. "Even without Morneau."

"Favre still hasn't committed to this season." Wally said, taking a sip of coffee.

"Fuck the Vikings." Larson frowned.

"Fuck the Twins." Wally shrugged.

"Fuck the Wolves." Larson folded the paper and slapped it on the table.

"Ass fuck the fucking Wild _and _the Gopher football team."

"Amen to that. Thank God for Tubby Smith, at least he runs a program with some class."

Having dispensed with the entire Minnesota sports landscape, Larson got down to business. "How was the coast?"

"Foggy. And the longer I was there, the thicker it got."

Over the course of the next half hour, Wally filled Larson in on his fishing trip to Neptune. Larson listened quietly as Wally went through his frustrations with the Balboa Sheriff's department, the staff at the Neptune Grand, the faculty at Hearst College and any friends, enemies or acquaintances of Logan Echolls he had been able to track down.

"I spent a week turning over every rock the kid has ever stepped on and I couldn't find a single person willing to tell me anything that wasn't public record. His friends won't talk and his enemies seem to admire him, greatly."

"His enemies? Who would they happen to be?"

"Well, there's Eli Navarro; went all through school with Echolls, had every reason in the world to hate his guts. Navarro's Grandma was Echolls' housekeeper, kid's got a tattoo with Echolls' girl's name on his back, school suspensions in which Echolls was involved…for Christ's sake, he did time for a crime related to the murder of his best friend for which Echolls was the prime suspect for nearly a year! Shoulda been the mother lode of info, right? But for some reason, he's ordered his boys to seal the record on Echolls and he threw me out of his office the second I mentioned the kid's name.

"Then there's Stosh Piznarski. They still tell the story on campus of the on air beat down Echolls gave this radio jock at Hearst. After all these years, I'm sure the story has been blown out of proportion but I tracked Piznarski down and again; the second I mention Echolls name, the kid not only clams up but rips me a new one before hanging up on me. Did it eloquently, too. He's not as belligerent as Jason Lewis but I'd say he's an up and comer."

"What else?"

"Well, I didn't talk to the last guy. Story is that he and Echolls had a dust up right at the beginning of finals week freshman year. Gorya Sorokin never returned to Hearst but I was told that had nothing to do with Echolls. I couldn't find him in my preliminary traces. You want me to keep trying?"

"Sorokin?"

"Yeah."

"As in Lev Sorokin? As in Russian mobster? Rules the coast in drugs and gun running?"

"Fuck me. Really?"

"Organized Crime Bureau has been after those guys for years. Decades. They're a very careful bunch."

"And Echolls got mixed up with them, somehow?"

"You find anything to suggest that?"

"Just the story."

"From years ago. Echolls still has both thumbs and the use of his legs. What does that tell you?"

"That it's all smoke, no fire. The Deans I spoke to said as much."

"Yeah. Those Russians are known for swift and merciless retaliation." Larson nodded. "And college kids are known for making up shit about famous classmates. The fact that those two were there at the same time practically ensures rumors."

"Oh, that's for damn sure. I met a girl who claimed to have been one of Echolls' flings only to have her girl friend immediately debunk her. If he'd actually boned all the women in that town who claim to have hit the sheets with him, Wilt Chamberlain would be tipping his hat. Hey, you know who else was at Hearst at the same time? Apollo Bukenya."

"Appollo Fuckwhonow?" Larson frowned.

"Bukenya! The child soldier who's book was featured on Oprah a few years back. There's a movie, starring some baby rapper who wants to be the next Ice T."

"You mean Ice Cube?"

"I don't know who the fuck I mean, I don't follow rap." Wally shrugged. "Maybe he wants to be the next Mos Def."

"He was great in Hitch Hiker's Guide."

"I loved that movie. Sam Rockwell is fuckin' awesome."

"Wasn't as good as the books."

"They never are." Wally sipped his cold coffee. "Except The Godfather."

"And Lonesome Dove."

"The Lord of the Rings."

"Pride and Prejudice."

"What?" Wally looked at his Section Chief as if he couldn't believe his ears.

"I mean the BBC version, not that piece of crap starring the chick from the pirate movies."

"Oh. Yeah. Okay."

The two of them sat over their coffee for a few minutes, deep in thought.

"Want me to ask OCB about Gory Sorokin?" Wally asked. "Find out what that fine young citizen has been up to the past three years?"

"You know anyone in the Organized Crime Bureau? They're a pretty closed shop." Larson grinned.

"I met McPike once," Wally said. "Back when I was wet behind the ears. But he's been retired for years."

"You _met him?"_ Larson's eyebrows flew up, impressed.

"Well…no." Wally admitted. "But I saw him. It was some kind of big banquet. Guy's a legend."

"Yeah, he is. But he took his pension before the Russians became much of a factor." Larson sighed. "I'll make a call, just to cover all our bases. I fully expect to be told to mind my own fuckin' business but if it turns out there's any connection at all between Agent Mars' husband and the Russian mob, her career could take a sharp turn."

"But in which direction?" Wally asked.

"Well, that would depend entirely on the nature of the connection wouldn't it?" Larson smiled.

* * *

"These are your _Mom's _paintings?" Veronica asked, incredulous. "There was nothing like this in your old house."

"I know." Logan nodded. "I was surprised, too. Until the gallery owner told me about Aaron helping to 'educate' Mom."

"He didn't want anything in the house that would detract from the movie posters with his face all over them." Veronica snorted.

"Where should we hang these?" They were standing in the living room, looking at the two paintings which were leaning against the wall.

"I want to keep them in here," Veronica said. "They're so beautiful! We need to keep the watercolor safe from the sun."

"Ms. McKnight told me the glass was treated to protect it from UV rays. Sun damage shouldn't be a problem."

"Logan, these are…I wish we could jump into them like they did in Mary Poppins." Veronica shook her head in wonder. "They actually _look _like your Mom!"

"They do, don't they." He looked at them. "That's probably another reason why Aaron wouldn't let her hang them at home. It wouldn't have suited him to have expressions of her personality around."

"Hey, don't do that. Forget about him. If these had been hanging in your house, they'd be gone with the rest of it. Think of these as a gift from your Mom and nothing more. I wish I had something to remind me of how things were with my Mom before it all fell apart. This is a good thing, Logan."

Logan nodded, still looking at the two paintings but Veronica could see his face relax. He smiled and looked at her. "These look like something that would hang in the home of a woman whose favorite animal was a mermaid."

"Mermaid? Really? She would have loved Minneapolis."

"Yeah, she'd have been right at home in the City of Lakes. Sometimes I think…" Logan stopped, looking sheepish.

"What?"

"It's stupid."

"I like stupid." Veronica assured him, bumping her hip into his. "Obviously."

"Good thing for me." he grinned. "Sometimes I like to think that when she hit the water, it was like the Little Mermaid, or Daryl Hannah in Splash. You know; she'd grow fins, a tail and gills and just…swim away." He shrugged. "I dunno. No body was ever found."

Veronica took her husband's hand. She knew that a part of him would always be the boy who refused to believe that his mother had left him that way. Part of her envied his uncertainty. She had no such luxury when contemplating her own mother.

"How long has it been since your mom tried to get in touch with you?" he asked, as if he could read her mind.

"Years." Veronica looked at Logan and shrugged. "She sent us a note…a couple of years ago, saying she was going back into rehab but since we never heard a follow up, I'm assuming it didn't take any better than the first attempt."

Logan pulled her into his arms. "That's enough time spent contemplating the women who abandoned us. Time to direct our thoughts to happier things, like; whose birthday is this week?"

"Mine?" Veronica grinned up at him.

"Pretty sure it was someone I've heard of…"

"Mine." she nodded.

"Someone important..."

"Yes! Mine, mine, mine!"

"Yours? You sure?" he looked down at her as she nodded, vigorously. "Well, that's gonna effect my plans."

* * *

"Hey, Mac."

"Parker?" Mac frowned into the phone. "What's wrong now?"

"Nothing's _wrong, _exactly. Everything's exactly the same. Nothing's right."

"Trouble in Pisneyland?"

"I'm boycotting the rides till I get a lifetime membership comped. Can I crash with you next weekend?"

"I thought you two were..."

"Boycott! Look it up! Right now, the idea of sharing a hotel room with Piz is...is...beyond...AUGH...and I can't very well call Veronica and ask to crash with her, now can I?"

"No. Of course you can crash with me. But are you sure you don't want to try..?"

"NO! Come on, Mac! You know how it's been for _three years._ I don't know what his problem is."

"Parker, you know Piz moves at his own speed; do you remember how long it took him to ask Veronica out?"

"He was scared to death of Veronica. He's not afraid of me. Maybe he should be. Maybe it's time for me to light a fire under his butt he won't soon forget."

"Maybe you just need to talk to him."

"I'm so sick of talking, I could scream! I didn't worry about it during our senior year because I figured he wanted to concentrate on school and graduation and to be honest, so did I, although some kind of a plan about what we were gonna do after college would've been kinda nice and I didn't worry right after graduation because I knew he was nervous about landing a job and that seemed like the mature thing to do and all and I didn't worry about it when Logan and Veronica tied the knot the second they got their diplomas, cuz we all know how those two have been like, for_ever _and if they hadn't put the rest of us out of our misery by just getting on with things, I think I would have tried to kill them both with my bare hands. Not that they made us all miserable or anything, that's not what I mean but come on! We all know they've been together for years and they belong together cuz they were totally _made _for each other and we've all seen first hand what mayhem they wreak when they aren't together and there was absolutely no reason in the world for them to wait another second cuz I mean, it's not like they have to worry about careers or making a living or anything like the rest of us and I'm not jealous, really! Okay, maybe I'm a little bit jealous; I mean, don't we all think it would be great to be set for life with no financial worries? But mostly, I'm glad. I think the uncertainty and excitement of starting out and having to make our own way in the world is fun but Veronica and Logan are really lucky that they know what they want to do, at least Veronica does. I mean, she always has, right? And as for Logan, all he's wanted since he was seventeen was Veronica and now he can do anything he wants and probably will and I'm happy for them and you know I love them to death. Logan's the closest thing to a brother I'll ever have. Looking back, trying to date each other was, like, the stupidest thing either of us ever did. Well, stupidest thing I ever did, I guess Logan's done lots of stupider things. Or is it 'more stupid'? Whatever. He was never the right guy for me. I thought Piz was. I still think he is. What if it's me? What if I'm the problem? Maybe he just doesn't want to be with me anymore and the reason we haven't moved forward, relationship wise is because he doesn't want to go any farther. I thought it was a good thing when he took the job in Golden but maybe outside of Hearst, out in the real world, which is crawling with women, you _know _it is, maybe he realized he didn't have to settle for me, just because I've been his girl friend for _three years, _maybe he's realized I'm just that; the girl he dated in college. If that's the problem, there's nothing to talk about, is there? And if that's not the problem then _what the hell is his problem?_If he doesn't want to be with me, then I sure don't want to be with him. If I'm gonna waste another day on a guy who doesn't want to be with me, I can find one better looking and richer and smarter than Piz but he wouldn't be as sweet and good and who am I kidding; I don't want anyone else, he's perfect. Why doesn't he want to be with me? And either way, I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. The hell with 'em all! All we do is talk! No talk."

"There is no talk. Do, or do not. But at least take a breath, okay?"

"Stop paraphrasing Yoda! Try to channel your inner female for just a minute, will you?"

"Don't dis the Jedi."

"Honestly, between you and Veronica, it's like I don't have any girl friends at all."

"You've got more than enough estrogen for all of us. We graduated three months ago. What's your rush?"

"He got a job. He found an apartment. It's twenty minutes from my parent's house. I'm stuck here until I find a job and _there are no jobs. _It would make economical sense if he'd at least ask me to move in."

"Piz is very traditional, you know that."

"Yeah. Leave it to me to find the only traditional rock and roller in America."

"You love that about him."

"We've moved beyond what I love about him. It's time for Piznarski to discover what he loves about me. If anything. Mac, what if it turns out he only stayed with me all through school because he was too damn lazy to go find another girl?"

"Then he'll make a perfect husband."

"Not if he never proposes."

* * *

"Mac."

"Hey, Veronica. What's up?"

"Do you think you could get behind the firewall of the OCB?"

"Yes. What is that?"

"Organized Crime Bureau. I've been trying to get inside for weeks but I keep running into blocks I don't know how to get around."

"Are you at work?"

"No. I'm sitting on a bench by the Mississippi river, on my lunch hour. I couldn't make this call from the office."

"Good. For a minute there, I thought you'd lost your mind."

"So?"

"So...what?"

"The OCB. Can you do it?"

"I could. But I won't."

"What? Q, you've never refused a request like this! You live for requests like this!"

"Correction; my ex-boyfriend lives for requests like this. He's the one who thinks it's his mission in life to thumb his nose at authority and snoop into places where he risks forty year sentences in federal prison. That, in a nutshell, is why he's now my ex-boyfriend. I can't stomach the thought of taking the kids to visit Dad in the big house. That, and the idea of the conjugal visit trailer makes me vomit."

"Oh, Mac. Again? Sorry."

"I'm just sorry that it's taken me so long to see the light."

"The dark side is a seductive place."

"I'm determined to disprove the notion that once you start down that path, forever it will rule your destiny."

"You're recommitting yourself to the side of truth, justice and the American way?"

"Max claims the dark side is the American way."

"He's got a lot of evidence to back up that position." Veronica sighed.

"Isn't it your job now to bring down guys like Max?"

"Or force them to help the good guys. That's all I want."

"I've known what he is from the beginning but...This time I mean it. Max is not my problem anymore."

"You know what would really help get your mind off your Bad Boy Deficit Syndrome?"

"A tall, dark, handsome Good Man?"

"No." Veronica snorted. "A challenge."

"A challenge like hacking into a federal system to ferret out info on a certain Russian mobster who walks with a pronounced limp if he can walk at all?"

"YES. Your mouth waters at the prospect, doesn't it?"

"You are asking me to commit at least a dozen federal crimes, each punishable by 25 to life. I'd be classified a terrorist if I were caught and I would be caught, since they'd probably assign you to my case."

"All I want is to find out if Gory Sorokin is still a problem! All the FBI leads I've followed have ended right in front of a locked door marked OCB. I need you to pick that lock for me! I'd never rat you out!"

"No. You'd share my cell. I won't be your Lone Gunmen, Veronica."

"I don't want you to assassinate anyone!"

"X-files allusion."

"I'd be impatient with your inner geek if she weren't the one I was trying to appeal to."

"What you refer to as my 'inner geek' happens to be the dominant part of my personality. I dumped Max so I wouldn't have to deal with his criminal tendencies, Bond. Not so I could become him."

"Jeez, Macster, when did you become such a conformist?"

"Veronica, we're not kids anymore! We are now subject to the full weight and force of the law if we pull this kind of stuff and get caught and if memory serves, _we always got caught. _Just because you got away with corporate espionage and intellectual property theft from Jake Kane _one time _doesn't mean you can do it again._"_

_"_I protected you from any fall out in that caper. Not a whiff of suspicion ever blew in your direction. It's as if you didn't exist."

"That time. What you're suggesting now would bring the federal government right to my door. I have no intention of poking Big Brother with a sharp stick. It might take them awhile but they would find me. And I'm pretty sure just the threat of water boarding would break me; I'd give you up."

"Fine. What's Max's number?"

"No way."

"I can get it from Logan, you know." Veronica warned.

"Like he would let you pursue this course." Mac snorted.

"Why is everyone against me?"

"When did you become such a whiner?"

"I'mmm not whiiiiining."

"Has it occurred to you to just ask to speak to someone at OCB?" Mac suggested. "You are a member of the federal crime fighting bureaucracy, you know. Professional courtesy might get you more info than hacking into the system and all it would cost you is a couple of lunches instead of professional shame, career suicide and a cellmate named Large Marge."

"Hmmm. The direct approach. I never thought of that."

"You never do. You're Wile E. Coyote with a badge."

"Fine. I get it. You won't help me; no need to hit me with a Star Trek allusion."

"Wile E. Coyote's not..."

"_Whatever! _I will take your advice, Q, and see where asking nicely will get me."

"Well, you know what they say; 'You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar'."

"If it's flies I wanted, I'd use a rotting corpse. Why would I take advice from someone who wants flies? You know what else 'they' say? 'A stitch in time saves nine'. What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know. I've never actually heard anyone say that."

"Well, they do! 'They' say it all the time."

"You don't take getting 'no' for an answer very well, do you? Doesn't Logan ever say no to you?"

"He tries." Veronica chortled. "I sway him with the force of my will."

"More like the sway of your-"

"You know the problem, here? I can't hit you with my Bambi eyes over the phone. Here, I'm sending you a photo, right now." Veronica took a picture of herself, Bambi eyes pleading and sent it to Mac.

"I just deleted it, unopened." Mac said, firmly. "I'm impervious to your tricks, Bond."

"Damn you and your iron resolve. Damn you both to hell!"

"You're pretty grumpy for a girl with a birthday coming up. Cheer up, V. Twenty three isn't exactly over the hill."

"Oh. You remembered. Thanks!" Veronica laughed. "I think Logan's got something planned but I haven't sussed it out yet."

"Really? Here's another bit of advice; let the poor boy surprise you, for once."

"Man, you are just packed with worldly wisdom today, aren't you? Remember back in the day when you used to come to me for advice?"

"I only ever came to you for advice on sex and I feel pretty confidant in my own decisions these days."

"You dumped Max, yet you're feeling confident? Who's the tall dark handsome Good Man?"

"I should've known you'd pick up on that." Mac chuckled.

"You really should've. Spill."

"He's...I've been doing a lot of work with the Balboa sheriff's department, getting their software updated, designing some systems for them..."

"If you're dating Vinnie VanLowe, I'm flying back to town for an intervention."

"Not Vinnie!" Mac began to laugh. In fact, she laughed so hard that Veronica was beginning to suspect that Mac was, indeed dating the slipperiest character ever to wear a badge in Neptune.

"You'd better give me a name, Cindy Mackenzie, or I'll assume you're lying to me."

"Let's just say, he's a member of your husband's fan club!"

"I'm pretty sure Parker won't give you a day pass to Pizneyland...Oh my god; LEO? You're dating Leo? Mac, that's...that's _great!" _Veronica felt a rush of pleasure for her friend, mingled with a stab of fear that a secret, held closely for three years, may find another ear. "How long has this been going on?"

"Not long. We've sort of been flirting for months but Leo never asked me out until about a week after I'd given Max the boot. Leo is a firm believer in honor."

"Most of the time, yeah." Veronica grinned, knowing very well that Leo's idea of honor was as flexible as her own. His kindness, however, far outweighed any flaws in his character. Not to mention his brilliant smile and dark good looks.

"You went out with him, didn't you?" Mac asked.

"Jealous?" Veronica teased.

"Of someone he dated a million years ago? Not everyone turns into a suspicious, possessive shrew while dating, Bond."

"Ouch. We went out maybe three times. It was pretty obvious from the beginning that we were only destined to be friends. I broke it off with Leo right after I made out with Logan for the first time. It was actually the night Mindy went Judge Dread at the dog pound."

"Well, since the chances of me making out with Logan are about googleplex to one, I think Leo and I may have a chance."

"Oh, I hope so, Mac! I really do."

* * *

"Happy birthday." Logan said the moment his wife opened her eyes in the early morning sunlight.

"Mmmm." Veronica smiled sleepily at him. He slapped a slim box onto the pillow beside her head.

"Oh." she regarded the box then looked up at him. "Were you holding that all night, waiting for this moment?"

"Yep. Open it."

She rose up on one elbow and lifted the lid off the box. Parting the tissue revealed the garnet necklace and matched ear rings she had admired weeks ago on their afternoon of antiquing. "Oh!" she breathed, lifting out the necklace. "I can't believe you remembered this!"

"I didn't have to. I bought them on the spot while you were drooling over an old Betsy Wetsy. I did have the ear rings converted from screw-ons to posts, since your ears are pierced."

"It was a Howdy Doody puppet, not a Betsy Wetsy and I wasn't drooling... Oh, these are gorgeous." She sat up and clasped the necklace around her throat, giggling. "But where can I wear them? They aren't exactly appropriate office wear."

"I'll find some place fancy to take you. In the mean time, although it's not the venue for antique garnets, on Friday night I'm taking you to First Ave."

"First Ave_? The _First Ave?"

"Yep. It looks exactly the same as it did when Prince first rocked the world. At least, it does on the outside."

"Don't tell me Prince will be there?"

"No, although I hear he does still show up occasionally. Mike Doughty is playing."

"Eee!" Veronica squealed. "I love Mike Doughty!"

"I know."

"You don't have back stage passes or anything, do you?"

"Nah. I figured after the Desmond Fellows fiasco, you were over the adolescent desire to meet your musical idols."

"Good call. You're not the only one who likes their romantic notions."

"Romance is like magic; it's better if you don't look behind the scenes."

"I don't know about that..." she put on the ear rings. "I let you look anywhere you want and you seem to like it..."

"Correction; romance is like a _magic act; _true love is actual magic; the deeper you look, the more real it is."

"You're pretty romantic. Thank you for the garnets, they're beautiful."

"They're beautiful on you. You'd look beautiful in polished agates. Even if you never wore them outside this room, I'd consider it money well spent."

"Would you?" she fell back on the pillow and smiled at him.

"You should wear more red."

"Should I?" she reached up and ruffled his hair.

"Or maybe," He pulled her to him, "you should just wear less of everything else."

* * *

Logan had given JR directions and while Veronica was at work, JR worked diligently to carry them out. After Veronica got home from work, she and Logan walked down the parkway to Lake of the Isles and under the bridge to the Tin Fish where they had a glass of wine, watching the world go by from the edge of the lake. They were back home before the sun set and Logan grilled the tenderloin JR had put into the fridge for them. There was also Caesar salad and a tiny ice cream cake.

Veronica sat on the back patio, wearing her garnets and watching Logan tend to their dinners while she sipped another glass of wine.

"As great as it is back here," she said "Wouldn't you like it if we could sit out front, where we could see our lake while we ate?"

"We can get a table up front." Logan nodded. "I like the privacy back here but the view is better there. You know what would really rock? A deck on the roof."

"A deck...yeah, it would but how would we get up there?"

"I dunno." he shrugged. "I just thought of it now. I suppose I could get an architect over here to take a look..." he glanced up at the flat roof of their house. "Maybe an outside stair? It's not like we'd use it much in winter, right?"

"I have no idea. I'm simultaneously excited at the prospect of a real, Midwestern, snowy, Norman Rockwell winter and scared to death of hypothermia and exposure."

"Imagine a crystal clear December night, no leaves on the trees, a deck on the roof equipped with a big ass telescope to see the stars."

"Ahh." she looked up and closed her eyes. "That might be the coolest thing we ever did."

"Not the _coolest_ but...I wonder if there's too much ambient light here. It's tough to see the stars from the middle of a city. Even the beaches in Neptune were too close to town. You really needed to get out on the boat."

"You like the stars, don't you?"

"They're a lot better than the stars I was raised with." he agreed. "Steaks are done."

"The sun is below the tree tops; do we need to go in to escape the mosquitoes?"

"Nope. Not if JR did his job; I had him fog the yard." Logan set the steaks on the beautifully set table JR had left them. "And that's not all I had him do." Before he sat down, Logan flipped a light switch near the back door and every tree in the yard lit up with white twinkle lights that had been strung through the branches. He sat down next to Veronica and lifted his glass. "Happy Birthday, Sugarpuss!"

"Thank you!" she touched her glass to his. "I am the luckiest girl _ever!"_

_"_I'm hoping we both get lucky." he raised an eyebrow.

"You don't need luck; you have a guarantee."

"Ooh. Happy Veronica's birthday to _me."_

_"_Don't sit there and pretend you're deprived." she laughed.

"I feel deprived."

"What about this morning?"

"That was fifteen hours ago! That's like...weeks."

In addition to the dinner, the fogging and the lights, JR had made sure that the out door speaker system had been hooked up and after dinner, they danced; nothing but slow songs.

It had been a perfect evening. Veronica couldn't have asked for anything more.

So she was surprised Friday evening to see a limo pull up to their curb a few hours before the Mike Doughty concert at First Ave.

"A limo, Logan? Really?" she laughed at her husband. "Are we really going to First Ave in a limo? I thought you wanted to keep a low profile."

"People will think it's Prince. Imagine their disappointment when you and I hop out." Logan laughed. "I didn't want to bother parking and I plan on drinking so..."

"A taxi never occurred to you?"

"A what?"

"That's what I thought." she laughed. "The show doesn't start for hours, why is the limo here so early?"

"I thought a drive around the lakes would be fun."

"Good thought!" she approved. When they were half way down the front walk, the driver's door of the limo opened and JR hopped out.

"Happy birthday, Mars." he said. "I'll make sure you get where you're going safely."

"Excellent!" Veronica grinned at him. He stepped forward and opened the back door for her.

"Ladies first," Logan said, ushering her in.

Still laughing, Veronica dipped her head into the back of the limo, blinked once and screamed.

To be continued...


	17. Chapter 17 Long Black American Car

CHAPTER 17 Long Black American Car

Veronica looked into the back of the limo, blinked once and screamed.

"SURPRISE!" yelled the crush of people inside the car.

Veronica stumbled backwards into the arms of her laughing husband as Wallace, Mac, Dick, Melinda, Heather, Piz and Parker climbed over each other, shrieking and laughing as they tumbled out of the limo onto the grassy boulevard.

"That was AWESOME!" Wallace cried, "Superfly, you been CAUGHT!"

"Did you see her face?" Parker laughed, leaning on Melinda who was laughing so hard she was in danger of bouncing out of her tiny top.

"Oh my GAWD, that was GREAT!" Mel cried, wiping her eyes. "I never thought we'd do it but WE DID."

"It's not every day we put one over on the all knowing, all seeing Ronnie Mars," Dick said, "But we did it today!"

"For real?" Mac demanded. "You didn't suspect a thing? You detected no disturbance in the Force at all?"

"No!" Veronica, still laughing so hard that Logan was holding her up, shook her head.

"Heather?" Logan noticed Melinda's little sister in the crowd.

"I'm the biggest surprise of all!" Heather said, throwing her arms around both of them. "Cuz I wasn't even invited."

"She had a total cow when she found out." Melinda rolled her eyes. "We caved just to get her to shut her pie hole."

"You couldn't have a great time, knowing I was back in Neptune, all alone and miserable." Heather explained. "And I knew you would've invited me if you had thought of it."

"Uh…yeah." Logan looked at Veronica. "It's just that…this isn't an under 18 night."

"No biggie." Heather shrugged. "I've got Mel's old ID."

"Your Dad's not here, is he?" Piz teased. "He's got a real problem with fake IDs."

"No, he's not here. Is he?" Veronica looked quickly at Logan, who shook his head. Then she turned to Heather, trying valiantly to straighten her face and look stern. "I should inform you, young lady, that as an officer of the law, I can't condone the use of fake IDs."

"It's not fake. It's totally real." Heather assured her.

"Yeah and we look completely alike," Mel said. "No one will know it's not her."

It was true; at fifteen, Heather was now as tall as her sister and although they weren't identical, they did look very much alike.

"Kinda beside the point…" Veronica started.

"Ah, she'll be with us." Logan broke in, squeezing Veronica's shoulders. "We're not gonna let her drink, pick up any guys, drive home alone or get in any trouble at all. It'll be great."

"You're gonna be the responsible adult?" Veronica grinned at him. "This I gotta see! Excellent." She relaxed against Logan's chest. "It would completely cramp my birthday if I had to go all Sheriff Mars on Heather."

"Good one!" Heather huffed. "But don't worry; I'm not gonna do anything bad, I just want to hang out with you guys and _dance."_

"Then dance away, little one." Logan said. "Dance like the wind."

"And there's this guy who's gonna meet me at the club." She went on as she demonstrated her dance moves, "Don't worry; he's a Face book friend and he's only a little older than you are, so…"

"Nice try." Logan grabbed her in a head lock and knuckled her scalp.

"Eek! Stop! Stop, there's no guy!" Heather shrieked til Logan let go of her.

"I don't think we need to worry about her," Dick assured Veronica and Logan. "She won't even go out with real dudes, much less cypress dudes."

"What?" Wallace asked.

"He means cyber dudes." Mac explained. "I think."

"Whatever, Macster." Mel said. "Heather here is extremely dismembering about guys."

"She means 'discerning'." Mac said. "I hope."

"After all," Mel linked her arm through Dick's and looking adoringly at her husband, "I set a pretty high standard for her."

"Oh, that's disturbing." Parker said, glancing at Dick and Melinda before turning her attention to the house.

"I thought you had a boy-"Logan stopped abruptly, catching the look on Heather's face as she quickly drew a finger across her throat.

"Veronica," Parker broke in "Your house is GORGEOUS!" She ran up the front walk.

They all moved back up the walk toward the house. Behind them, JR shut the doors to the limo and opened the driver's door. Leaning down, he said to the person riding shotgun "I think it's gonna be a while."

"Okay." Bryn nodded. "But get back in here where it's air conditioned; you're letting all the cold out."

* * *

"Do you notice anything weird about Parker?" Piz asked Wallace as they walked toward the house.

"Man, how sweet was that jet? I gotta talk to Logan about _that_."

"She's barely spoken to me since we got to the airport."

"A plane like that doesn't come cheap." Wallace shook his head.

"She's been acting…distant all week. Do you think she's met someone else?"

"I wonder if the pilot is on retainer, or what?"

"You're deliberately ignoring me, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"You don't want to get dragged into my relationship problems."

"No."

"But I really need to talk to someone about this!"

"I swear, man; you're the girliest friend I got." Wallace said in disgust.

"Well yeah; your best friend is Veronica. Of course I am." Piz said, exasperated. Wallace shook his head and went up the walk to join the others going into the house. "Look around!" Piz called after him. "You're the girliest friend_ I've_ got!"

A laugh behind him made him turn around.

"Hi." Heather, who had run back to the limo to drop off her purse, smiled at Piz, her eyes questioning. "Who are you, now?"

"We've met, Heather. I'm Piz." He said.

She lifted her eyebrows and shrugged, apologetically.

"Logan's place, a year ago? You're the reason I cut my hair." He pointed at his head. He'd gotten rid of the shag and the mud flaps over his ears at the beginning of their senior year at Hearst. Now he sported a short cropped, artfully disheveled cut. He had recently added a sharply trimmed goatee that gave him a rakish, edgy look completely at odds with his sweet personality. Parker thought the new look was sexy as hell.

"You cut your hair for me?" Heather frowned. "That's ...random."

"You asked me if I was Justin Bieber's dad." Piz stated flatly.

"Ohh. Oh yeah." Heather giggled, remembering.

"I'm only six years older than he is!"

"_Only_?" Heather mocked him and ran into the house.

"Cute kid." Piz mumbled to himself.

* * *

"Nice digs." Mac nodded approvingly, standing inside the front door, looking left and right into the living room and kitchen. "Affluence suits you, Bond!"

"I always knew it would." Veronica chortled.

"Logan booked rooms for most of the entourage but Wallace and I are crashing here." Mac grinned, dropping her voice. "I told Parker she could stay, too. I didn't think you'd mind."

"Of course not!" Veronica assured her, "but what about..?"

"She doesn't want to talk about it."

Despite the long ago moment in time when Logan and Parker had attempted to be a couple, not even Veronica could whip up any feelings of jealousy in light of their obviously platonic relationship. It would have been as silly as Logan being jealous of Wallace.

She didn't know that there had been a time when Logan had been _very _jealous of Wallace.

Parker now insisted that she had only consented to date Logan back then so he wouldn't fall into the clutches of some rapacious female who would really have complicated matters. Veronica thanked her for being such a selfless friend. It hadn't hurt that Piz had fallen for Parker before the scorch marks she'd burned into the carpet of the Neptune Grand had stopped smoking.

A naturally honest girl, Parker admitted that it was Piz she'd had a preference for all along. In the aftermath of her rape, she had been determined to be strong and positive, so pining after a cute musician who had a crush on her friend didn't fit her plan at all. She liked boys, had always enjoyed their company and attention and she missed dating. She had had serious misgivings when Logan had first asked her out. She didn't want anything to jeopardize her hard won friendship with Veronica. She and Logan had been comfortable together and looking back, she thought the lack of chemistry between them had been part of the appeal; he had made her feel safe venturing back into the dating game precisely because of the lack of sparks. Parker even admitted now, that despite her wounded pride, she hadn't been nearly so upset that her boyfriend had attacked his ex's new beau as she had been furious with Logan for beating up Piz.

Although at the moment, she was considering asking Logan to beat him up again.

"What are you doing?" Piz asked as she grabbed her bag from out of the limo.

"I'm staying here." She smiled.

"But what about our room?"

"Your room. I see you all the time, how often do I get a chance to see Veronica and Mac anymore?" She hung her bag on her shoulder and went back up to the house.

"See?" Piz said to Wallace. "Logan booked us a room at the nicest hotel in town and she'd rather crash here, with Mac."

"Did you see the full court in the back yard?" Wallace answered. "And there's a boxing ring in the basement!"

"Oh. Well, Yeah." Piz said, throwing up his hands. "What girl could resist those amenities?"

* * *

After they had all toured and admired the house and the yard, they made their way back to the front where the car waited. They were all talking and laughing as they piled into the back of the limo and JR pulled away from the curb.

"This is so much fun!" Heather squealed, throwing herself across a seat. Dick and Melinda piled in on top of her.

"Move over, fatty." Mel ungraciously said, slapping her sister on the backside.

"Ooh. See? That's why I don't mind having Heather live with us." Dick elbowed Wallace as he ogled the two Button girls.

"I'm moving, I'm moving." Heather said.

"That's it, Heather; any more lip I'll have Mel spank you again." Dick said, flashing a thumbs up to Wallace and Piz.

"I spank Heather when she's bad or when Dick's being especially good." Mel explained to Parker and Mac.

"You two are so _gross_." Heather groaned. "And I'm pretty sure that's child abuse."

"You can move back in with Mom, anytime." Mel told her.

"That would _definitely_ be child abuse." Heather grumbled as she scooted over.

"You're much luckier than you deserve." Wallace said to Dick, who nodded, happily.

"There's soda for you," Logan told Heather as he uncorked a bottle of champagne.

"Fill me up." Wallace held out a plastic wine glass. "This is the first time we've been all together since graduation."

"Are we really going to First Ave or is this just an excuse for a limo party?" Veronica asked, getting into the front bench seat with Logan.

"First Ave!" Piz answered, holding out glass. "I didn't come all the way to Minneapolis to skip a concert at one of the most important rock venues in America."

"We're going to First Ave? Cool." Said Candy.

"Yeah. Way cool." Parker smiled at the gorgeous stranger who had climbed into the limo behind her and was now seated between her and Mac. "I'm Parker. Who are you?"

"You invited Candy?" Veronica leaned in and whispered to Logan who was busy pouring champagne.

"What? No." Logan looked up.

"I'm a friend of Logan and Mrs. Mars." Candy smiled at Parker.

"Who?" Wallace frowned. "You call her 'Mrs. Mars'?"

"What do you call her?" Candy asked, slightly belligerently.

"Veronica." "V." "Superfly." "Ronnie." "Bond." Answers came from all corners of the limo.

"Scary Hell Bitch." Dick threw in. His wife and sister in law simultaneously hit him on each side of the head. "Ow! Sorry; I meant to say 'Charming'."

"Candy? Where did you come from?" Logan demanded.

"I was on my way to the lake and I saw you guys and I...it looked like you were having fun and...it's...can I stay?" Candy's face fell and his voice died as he saw the look on Logan's face.

"Do you make it a habit to hop into limos with crowds of strangers?" Logan frowned.

"Don't you?" Candy asked.

"Every chance I get!" Dick guffawed, putting up a fist for Candy to bump. "That's how I met Beyonce!"

"You never met Beyonce." Mel rolled her eyes.

"Did too!" Dick insisted. "Last spring in L.A.! You were there."

"Sweetie, I'm telling you; that was just some poor girl on her way to prom. You scared the hell out of her."

"It was Beyonce." Dick shook his head. "Who else would have bodyguards to throw me out?"

"That was her dad. I talked him out of having you arrested." Mel sighed.

"How'd you manage that?" Wallace asked, impressed.

"She told him Dick was special." Logan answered.

"He really is, isn't he?" Wallace nodded.

"Everybody?" Veronica leaned forward, rubbing Logan's leg to reassure him that all was well. "Say 'hi' to our friend, Candy!"

"Your name is 'Candy'?" Parker said, smiling. "That's…just…_perfect."_

"Candy?" Piz asked. "What kind of a name is 'Candy'?"

"My last name is Kane, so…" Candy shrugged and smiled.

"What kind of a name is 'Piz'?" Parker snapped.

"My name is 'Candy' and your name is 'Pez'? Are we going to see Eminem?" Candy quipped.

"Your name is Candy Kane?" Mac said, her mouth falling open. "My God, that _is _perfect."

"Ewww." Heather giggled in spite of herself. "Maybe I'll go sit up front."

"Should I throw him out?" Logan quietly asked Veronica.

"No!" she laughed. "We like him. Besides, if you did, I think Mac and Parker might mutiny."

"Any relation to Kane Software?" Dick asked.

"No but I have a tight relationship with Kane underwear." Candy snickered.

"Um, Mrs. _Mars_?" Piz looked quizzically at Veronica and Logan.

"I'm done with elephants and clowns." Logan explained.

"So, you ran away and joined the office?" Piz grinned.

"Almost." Logan smirked.

"Well, here's to an ordinary life!" Piz raised his glass. "To Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent and Peter Parker!"

"I wouldn't go that far." Logan didn't toast. "But here's to life."

"Here, here!" Veronica raised her glass.

"I don't know," Parker sipped, looking speculatively at Logan. "Tony Stark couldn't keep from blurting out that he was Iron Man."

Heather, who was reading Romeo and Juliet in school, quoted "A rose by any other name..."

"Is still banned by the Hall of Fame!" Dick broke in.

"So what are we celebrating?" Candy asked.

"It's Mrs. Mars'-Veronica's birthday." Mac told him.

"Yeah, it's a private party, dude. You weren't invited." Logan said as Veronica elbowed him and shook her head.

"Can't I come?" Candy looked crestfallen.

"Of course!" Parker and Mac cried simultaneously. "You can come along! He can stay, right?" Veronica looked pointedly at Logan.

"We're going to a concert." Logan said. "He doesn't have a ticket."

"I don't need a ticket to get into First Ave." Candy sneered. "My sister dates the bouncer. Or the bartender. Or both. She's kinda slutty."

"Really?" Now even Piz was impressed with the new addition to the party. "Sweet!"

"Fine." Logan shrugged and handed Candy a glass of champagne. "I guess you're in."

"Cool." Candy took the glass and looked around the limo. "So. Are you guys all like, old friends?"

"Yep." Parker nodded. "Mac and Wallace have been Veronica's friends since high school. That's Dick; he and Logan have been best friends since then, that's Dick's wife, Melinda and her sister Heather, who for some reason I've never really understood is buddies with Logan and then there's Piz and me, who met them all at Hearst, where I was Mac's roommate and Piz was roomies with Wallace."

"You've known them since high school?" Candy turned to Mac, who finding herself looking into the most beautiful brown eyes she'd ever seen, could only nod. "What was that like?"

"It was scary." Wallace laughed, downing a glass of champagne. "Hanging out with these two is not for the faint of heart!"

"Like being on a roller coaster with a full stomach." Mac mused. "Really fun as long as you could accept that vomit was inevitable."

"Yeah." Candy nodded, as though he suspected as much.

"Wallace and I were friends with V in high school," Mac said. "Dick and Logan were much too cool for us."

"Dick doesn't seem that cool." Candy glanced at the blond with his wife on his lap.

"He's not." Mac assured him. "But we tolerate him because of Logan. And Mel. We like her and can't figure out what she sees in Dick."

"Dick and I eloped to Vegas on our first date." Mel told Candy. "We realized it was a huge mistake almost immediately but every time we got together to discuss divorce we had so much fun that pretty soon we figured fuck it; let's stay married."

"You really should needlepoint that on a pillow." Veronica said.

"I know! Isn't that romantic?" Mel grinned.

"Yeah," Dick said. "We're on our forth year of double secret marriage probation. So far, so good."

"Yeah." Parker smiled, touching Candy's arm, "some couples defy imagination, while others" she nodded at Logan and Veronica "were clearly meant for each other while still others," she cut her eyes at Piz "just lay around and go nowhere."

"How did you meet them?" Piz asked, frowning at Parker while accepting a glass of champagne from Logan.

"I worked for the fucker they bought the house from. Logan made him cry." Candy smiled brilliantly at Parker who caught her breath.

"I did not." Logan was uncorking a second bottle of champagne.

"Believe me, Dude." Candy said. "He was crying on the inside."

"What the Hell? Where are we?" Dick demanded, looking out the window at Lake Calhoun. "You never said you lived in a Pepsi commercial."

"Look at all the boats." Mel cooed.

"Tell us about it!" Parker breathlessly asked, leaning into Candy.

"My _girlfriend _wants to know how Logan bought his house?" Piz grinned at Candy and shrugged. Parker coolly raised her eyebrows at him and then turned back to Candy with a smile.

"Yeah." She leaned against Candy and giggled. "His girlfriend does. We're not _married_ or anything. Not even engaged. So tell us about the house."

"Well," Candy said grinning, "the douche bag I worked for had that listing for _months _cuz the old bitch who owned it couldn't seem to get it into her wrinkled brain that the market had crashed and no one could afford her price. Then these two land in town and say 'we'll take it' and Bruce the douche—that's my old boss—gets all high and mighty and 'ooh, you're too young and stupid to know how to buy a house, you're so lucky I'm here to help you do all this super complicated financial shit' and Logan just cut him off, threw a million dollars on the table and told Bruce to go fuck himself. It was _awesome."_

"I didn't throw a million dollars on the table." Logan objected.

"You kinda _did_." Veronica said, sipping her champagne.

"It was more like two million." Logan explained. "But I didn't."

"You _kinda_ did." Veronica insisted.

"But you did tell him to go fuck himself." Dick said, as though it were a given.

"I did _not_." Logan tried to look innocent and offended at once. "Candy is a _liar_."

"That wasn't even the best part." Candy told his adoring audience. He then launched into a lurid, detailed retelling of the morning that Logan had arrived in Minneapolis, stopping off on his way from the airport long enough to buy a Ferrari before locking the Realtors out in the yard while he said 'hello' to his wife.

"Yeah, that part is all true." Logan admitted with a smirk.

"Duude." Dick nodded, putting up a fist for Logan to bump. "Nice going! Can I borrow the Ferrari?"

"How do you know about that?" Veronica choked on her champagne, staring horrified at Candy. "You weren't even there!"

"Elliot's got a mouth." Candy shrugged. "Every realtor in town knew that story by the end of the weekend."

"So much for flying under the radar," Veronica groaned.

"Veronica thinks 'flying under the radar' is the same as marching up to the radar and punching it in the face." Mac giggled to Candy. "These two can't be trusted anywhere."

"Come on V." Wallace laughed. "You _knew_ what you were getting with him!"

"What?" Logan feigned innocence. "I'm a prince!"

"The Prince of Darkness, maybe." Dick nodded.

"Veronica's not exactly an innocent bystander!" Piz laughed. "She gets in plenty of trouble without his help."

"That's true." Dick said. "How many times did you get hauled out of school in cuffs, Ronnie?"

"Neptune or Hearst?" Mac asked.

"It was all a misunderstanding!" Veronica objected.

"Every time?" Mac asked.

"You _know_ I never got caught when I was _guilty_." she insisted. "And anyway, Logan was arrested at least as often as I was."

"I was framed." He said, mildly, refilling Wallace's glass.

"Not every time." She pointed out. He just shrugged.

Wallace leaned toward Candy. "I first met Veronica while duct taped naked to a flag pole."

"She was naked?" Candy couldn't help raking the birthday girl with his eyes.

"Not her; me!" Wallace said.

"Oh." Candy's look of disappointment made Parker laugh.

"I was in some deep shit with a motorcycle gang. Not only did she have the guts to cut me down, she got them off my back for good. I knew I wanted to hang with a chick that cool. At first, she tried to scare me away-"

"I did NOT." Veronica objected.

"You did." Wallace insisted. "_'who told you you could sit there_?'" he mimicked Veronica's surly greeting to him at the lunch table. "But I was made of sterner stuff that. I first met Logan later that week. He was busting out the headlights on Vs car!"

"Why did you do that?" Candy asked but Logan was busy pointing out the local beaches to Dick, Melinda and Heather who had their faces pressed to the windows like a pack of dogs.

"He had his reasons." Wallace said, looking speculatively at his host. "You know, that was kind of a red letter day for me, so I remember it pretty well. Logan was bustin' out Veronica's headlights with a crowbar. I was scared but she wasn't. Not at all. Then, just when I thought things couldn't get any hairier, the PCHers showed up. That's the same gang that taped me to the flag pole. Weevil, the leader of the gang, apparently decided he'd rather kill Logan than me. Logan was there with a couple of his buddies but the bikers outnumbered them three to one. Weevil tried to make Logan apologize."

"I never heard this story." Parker said. "What happened?"

"Weevil beat the tar out of Logan." Veronica said softly.

"What? No way." Candy couldn't believe Wallace's tale. Mac, Piz and Parker looked skeptical as well.

"That's...hard to imagine." Piz said, frowning.

"I swear, that's what happened." Wallace insisted. "Logan didn't even try to defend himself; Never threw a single punch. He just kept getting up and letting Weevil knock him down. I remember thinking 'stay down, you moron! Just stay down!' But he wouldn't. And he wouldn't apologize, either. Now, I didn't know Logan from Adam at the time. I figured he was as scared of Weevil as I was."

"Yeah, that doesn't sound like him at all." Piz shook his head.

"Right? Logan's not afraid of _anybody_!" Wallace agreed. " Looking back, I think he realized that if he'd fought Weevil, all hell would've broken loose and those bikers would've demolished his buddies. At one point, Weevil knocked Logan down and said 'I can do this all day'. What I know _now_ is that Logan could do it all day, too."

"What, get knocked down?" Parker asked.

"Take the hits to protect his friends." Wallace nodded. Veronica smiled, impressed but never surprised by Wallace's insight.

"Yeah, that...that actually does sound like him." Piz said, leaning back into the seat.

"Veronica knew it." Wallace said. "That's why she made Weevil stop. I used to think I didn't meet the real Logan until we got teamed up in physics class the next year but now I know I met the real thing right away; I just didn't get it. I started putting two and two together later, when we volunteered for this annual sociology project at Hearst."

"What kind of project?" Candy asked.

"It was a prisoner of war experiment. I was one of the guards and he was one of our prisoners. We were allowed to do all sorts of shit just short of torture to get info about a terrorist attack out of them. We used intimidation, insults, sleep and sensory deprivation, solitary confinement... The head guard got really personal and nasty. Some of the prisoners looked like they were gonna crack but never Logan. He just looked bored; there was no doubt in my mind he could take it a lot longer than we could dish it out. He even bribed a guard to get one of his fellow prisoners a clean pair of pants. The head guard knew it was Logan but never could prove it."

"How do you know he's the one who did it?" Candy asked.

"Who do you think he bribed?" Wallace laughed. "He also organized the first ever successful jail break in the history of the project."

"Well, he's probably the only prisoner who had so much experience in real jail cells." Mac pointed out.

"I can't really remember why I ever thought he was scary." Wallace shook his head.

"Who's scary?" Logan shouted at the back of the limo.

"Not you!" Parker yelled back at him.

"I can be scary." Logan objected.

"Oh, you're a teddy bear." Veronica said. "Everyone knows _I'm_ the scary one." Everyone but Candy nodded.

"_I _met Veronica when she busted me for selling online purity tests to our classmates." Mac told Candy. "she was so impressed with my mad computer skills that she didn't rat me out."

"That was you?" Logan asked. "I never took that test."

"Of course not!" Mac looked horrified. "I would have had to add a whole new layer of debauchery to keep you from ruining the curve."

"I wasn't that bad." Logan protested.

"You're the only guy who would have answered 'yes' to 'Have You Ever Banged Your Best Friend's Mom?'." Dick said.

"Whoa!" Candy and Piz looked impressed.

"Yep." Dick nodded. "All through our senior year."

"Eew!" Parker, Mac and both Button sisters cried, looking horrified at Logan.

"She wasn't your mom!" Logan objected.

"Whatever. She was married to my Dad."

"And you weren't my best friend!" Logan added.

"Ouch!" Dick looked stricken.

"Holy shit." Wallace stared, open mouthed at Logan.

"What?" Logan demanded. "She was a Laker Girl!"

"You. Are a god." Piz said simply.

"That's what _she_ said!" Dick snickered.

"I thought you two were high school sweet hearts?" Candy asked, looking at Logan and Veronica.

"Hardly." Logan blew out a breath. "Her rejection drove me to cougar town."

"I'd have done Kendall too," Dick said, thoughtfully, "if she wasn't married to my Dad."

"In your dreams." Logan chuffed. "She was completely out of your league."

"Hey!" Mel protested.

"What?" Logan asked. "You're completely out of his league, too."

"Tell Candy how we met, Piz!" Veronica cut in, not wanting to think much less talk about Kendall.

"Huh?" Piz roused himself from contemplation of his hero. "Oh! Well, my first day at Hearst, all my stuff got stolen out of my car and my room mate, Wallace, said he had this friend who could track it all down for me. I only let her try cuz I thought she was hot but she actually did it; she got all my stuff back. I met her boyfriend, too…" he indicated Logan, "…but I can't say I met the _real _Logan until the day he beat the shit out of me."

"What?" Candy looked from Piz to Logan in disbelief.

"Oh, that again?" Veronica snorted and downed her champagne. "He didn't even break anything! You are such a whiner, Piznarski."

"I barely remember that." Logan mused. "But I'm sure you deserved it."

"It was just a misunderstanding," Piz told Candy. "Someone deserved it, just not me. Like Wallace, I thought he was a pyscho until I had more information."

"What the hell is going on out there?" Dick demanded. The limo rolled through the woods, past a shady play ground and picnic area filled with families and down a grassy hill, to Lake Harriet parkway. The Bandstand came into view, where an orchestra was playing. The lawn leading down to the lake was covered with people walking, biking, pushing strollers, sitting on the benches or on blankets spread in the grass. "You really _do_ live in a Pepsi commercial!"

"Just a Friday evening in Minneapolis." Veronica said. "Zed Leppelin is playing here on Sunday. We may have to come down."

"Oh, let's!" Parker said. "That would be so much fun!"

"And I wouldn't even need my ID." Heather added.

"Pretty good ice cream cones here." Logan told Heather. "No crushes, like at Amy's but huge and tasty."

"I want to ride a sail boat." Mel said, looking hopefully at Dick.

"I think you can rent them." Logan nodded. "I know you can rent canoes, kayaks and bikes just about everywhere."

"I want to live here." Parker pouted.

"Just wait." Wallace warned. "I lived in Chicago during the basketball season; it's gonna change."

"That's what we hear." Veronica said. "But seriously; how bad can it get?"

"How bad? Look around." Candy waved his hand out the window at the lake covered with boats, the park covered with people and the sky, turning pink and orange with the sunset. "How bad would it have to get to keep everyone in the world from moving here?"

Everyone in the limo looked out the window and considered what that implied.

"Dude," Dick looked sadly at Logan. "You're fucked."

* * *

"Hey, I want to toast the newlyweds!" Parker lifted her glass. "I haven't seen you two since you tied the knot! Congratulations and may I say on behalf of all your friends; Thank you for putting us out of our misery!"

"Thank you, Parker!" Veronica raised her glass as well "We only did it for all your sakes!"

"Fuck them," Logan took a swig of the champagne and slamming the bottle into the ice bucket. "I did it for _my _sake." He grabbed Veronica and kissed her until her wine glass slipped out of her hand, spilling champagne on the floor of the car as he pressed her back onto the seat. The others laughed and cheered and eventually grew uncomfortable.

"Stop it, there are children present!" Heather finally said, poking at them since it was obvious that they had forgotten they weren't alone.

"And civilized adults." Wallace added, wincing.

"Seriously, you two, cut it out." Mac reached out a toe and prodded them. "You're gonna get Dick and Melinda started."

"_Dick and Melinda_?" Piz demanded, looking at Parker, who was unfortunately looking at Candy.

"What, an old married couple like us?" Mel snorted. "We have a little bit of self control."

"It's not self control; it's exhaustion." Dick leered.

"You live with both of them?" Candy asked Dick, looking at both Button girls. "How do you tell them apart?"

"I don't!" Dick chortled. "That's _their_ problem!"

"Stop the car, I want to get out." Heather said.

"Me too." Wallace nodded.

"Nobody's getting out!" Veronica laughed, trying to push Logan off of her so she could sit up.

"Yeah, get out, get out!" Logan said, holding her down. "We'll let you back in in ten...twenty minutes!"

"NO!" Veronica shrieked.

"_Yes." _Logan groaned, kissing her again.

"It wouldn't take me twenty minutes." Dick lifted an eyebrow at Mel.

"That's not exactly bragging, is it?" She asked.

The privacy window slid down and a voice asked "Do you want me to stop the car?"

"Stop the car!" Parker cried. "Stop NOW. What is this place?"

They were just driving past the Rose Gardens. As luck would have it, there was an empty parking space so JR pulled over.

"We're gonna be late for the concert..." Veronica tried to object but Logan's kiss cut her short as their friends ignored them and piled out of the car en mass, running like a pack of little kids toward the flowers.

* * *

"What in the world is going on?" Bryn asked, turning to look through the glass into the back of the car.

"Don't look; it'll burn the eyes right out of your head." JR warned. "Oh, no; it's okay." He saw Logan and Veronica exit the car and follow their friends up the path to the fountain. Under the trees leading to the entrance, Logan grabbed Veronica, spun her around and kissed her again.

* * *

In the shadow beneath the trees, Veronica ran her hands through Logan's hair and smiled up at him.

"Surprise." He said, looking very pleased with himself.

"You brought them all here for my birthday," she said, amazed. "How sweet you are. Thank you!"

"I tried to talk your Dad into joining us but he thought we'd have more fun sans sheriff."

"He's still coming for Labor day weekend, isn't he?" she asked, suddenly apprehensive.

"Of course." he rested his forehead on hers.

"Then this is _perfect_." she sighed.

"As long as we keep Dick from skinny dipping in the fountain." Logan pulled her into the garden.

* * *

"So, that's the boss." Bryn said, watching the couple under the trees.

"Yep." JR nodded. "Come on."

They got out of the limo and stood in the grass, waiting for their party to return. Bryn jumped up and down to stretch her legs while JR watched her, appreciatively.

"This is the weirdest date I've ever been on." She turned and smiled at him. "But I can see why you like working for them."

"Hey, I told you; my job frequently seems like time off. How many guys can bring a girl to work with them?"

"_A_ girl? You bring a lot of girls to work with you?"

"Oh yeah. Lots. _Tons_. Doesn't everything about me just scream 'playa'?" He ran a hand over his short, curly hair.

"Definitely." she laughed.

"I could have said 'the' girl," JR suggested but she shook her head.

"Easy, cowboy! What's the rush, now?" She laughed. "It's certainly the first time I've ever been out with a guy while he was being paid."

"Please don't tell me you've been out with guys where you were being paid."

"NO." she laughed and looked back at the party in the garden. "They seem like a fun bunch."

"Yeah." JR watched the group, who were now gathered near the first fountain. "Both the Mars are very careful about the people they let in. It's kinda funny; because of my position, I know more about all of them than they'd ever guess but most of them don't even know my name."

"Weren't you at school with them?"

"College." He shrugged. "Veronica and I were in the same program but we didn't run in the same circles. I worked at the hotel and she dated the guy who lived in the penthouse. Dick lived with Logan at the hotel for a year and I doubt he remembers me at all."

"Does that bother you?"

"Clearly, you don't know Dick." JR laughed. "I thoroughly enjoy my invisible anonymity. Logan says fame and happiness have nothing in common. He would know." He suddenly stood up straight, staring at the crowd as they came back toward the car. "What the fuck? Is that _Candy_?"

"Which one? What's the problem?" Bryn looked over the crowd. "That guy wasn't at the airport."

"He's...nothing. There's no problem." JR motioned for her to get back in the car as the party returned.

"On to First Ave, JR." Logan said, as his friends piled back into the limo. "We don't want to miss the opening number."

"Don't worry, sir." JR assured him. "If the show starts before ten, it'll be an accident."

* * *

The sun had gone down while they were at the Rose Gardens. The sky remained a vivid orange and purple as they drove back around Calhoun and Isles but by the time JR turned the car down Douglas to Hennepin and took the turn to First, it was full dark and the streets of down town were filling up with young people out for a good time.

Now it was Piz who had his nose pressed to the glass like a puppy, eager to get a look at the House That Prince Built.

"There it is! There it is!" He said, excitedly pointing. "See the silver stars? It still looks _exactly_ the same!"

"Is that where the Wolves play?" Wallace was looking out the other side of the car, at the Target Center.

"Yeah." Candy said. "And the Hard Rock and O'Donovan's make up the rest of the corner. O'Donovan's has the best Irish Car Bombs in town."

"Oh, that sounds yummy!" Parker said.

"This is it!" Piz barely waited for the car to roll to a halt in front of the black doors before grabbing his door handle. "I can't believe I'm finally here. _And in a Limo!" _He looked back at his friends before pushing open the car door. "To those who are about to rock;_ I salute you_!"

And then he was gone.

Parker looked at Mac and dryly said "I think I've been stood up for a frickin' dance club."

"Well, you've been flirting your little heart out with Candy all evening!" Mac pointed out.

"Yeah!" Parker snapped. "And it's breakin' his heart!"

"Whatever." Mac joined the rest of the party as they exited the limo. "I just want the girl in the blue dress to keep on dancing."

"I feel like bustin' up a Starbucks." Parker grumbled. Then she pasted on a big bright smile and followed Mac into First Ave.

to be continued...


	18. Chapter 18 Remembering Mollymook

Chapter 18 Remembering Mollymook

An hour later, Veronica and Logan were perched on stools near the wall, a tall table holding their beers and several large glasses of ice water. They were hot and sweaty and taking a break from the dance floor. Wallace and Heather were dancing near the edge of the crowd and every once in a while they caught a glimpse of Dick and Mel, bouncing above the throng. Candy, Parker and Mac were at the bar, laughing and dancing. Piz had been spotted all over the place; at the edge of the stage; on the dance floor; talking with the bouncers; chatting up regulars; deep in discussion with bartenders at both the up and downstairs bars. He wasn't just the proverbial kid in a candy store; he was in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

"_You are the only answer!" _the beefy blond with the Memphis voice growled from the stage. "_My plans spun all around you…"_

Veronica was watching the crowd, her eyes picking out their friends having a blast. Logan was watching Veronica. She was flushed and sweaty and her hair was a mess.

He wanted to find a dark corner and have his way with her.

"You are, you know." He said.

"I am…what?" she turned and looked at him, her dark blue eyes shining as she leaned toward him, her chin in her hands.

"The only answer." He replied. "Always have been."

"Really?" she looked skeptical. "Doesn't that depend on the question?"

"Nope." He smirked. "Ask me anything."

"What's your favorite color?"

"Veronica."

"When's your birthday?"

"Veronica."

"What's your favorite food?" she closed her eyes and grimaced, realizing what a softball that was. Logan just grinned. "That's cheating. It doesn't count if you just answer my name for things like; what's two plus two."

"But two plus two _is _'Veronica'." He insisted. "If by 'two plus two' you're really asking 'what makes sense?'. Ask me 'What do I need?', 'What do I want?', 'What is the meaning of life?', 'Why do I get up in the morning?', 'What drives me?', 'What's worth dying for?' and most important, 'What's worth living for?' and the answer's the same; Veronica."

She stared at him for a long beat, then leaned in even closer and said "Want to dump these suckers and get out of here?"

"Veronica," he shook his head without breaking eye contact. "I think I'll make you wait for it."

"You love torturing me, don't you?"

"I like it when you squirm." He smirked.

Wallace and Heather joined them a moment later, hot and out of breath.

"The old man can't keep up with me." Heather explained. "He needs to go find some older women his own speed."

"Instead of taking offense," Wallace said, "I'll take your advice. I saw some older ladies who looked…sedate enough for me, over by the bar." With a grin at Logan and Veronica, he took off again.

"This is so much fun!" Heather said, leaning against the wall. "But I need _water_."

Logan handed her one of the glasses of ice water on the table in front of him.

"Someday, when you're old enough to drink," he told her "Remember this; the key to avoiding a hangover is to drink plenty of water. A lesson I wish someone had taught me when I was your age."

"Thanks!" Heather downed half her glass in one gulp. "But I'm _never _gonna drink."

"Good call." Veronica said. "It's nothing but trouble. And don't even drink water if you don't know who had access to the glass. You never know…"

"Why the tee totalers path?" Logan asked.

"Well," Heather sighed. "Dick is fun and funny and I like him? but when he drinks he's just stupid. And if Mel hadn't been drinking that first weekend, they wouldn't have run away and gotten married."

"I thought you were glad they're married?" Veronica asked.

"I _am. _But they're just lucky. It could have been a _disaster _the way they did it. If they had just dated for a while, they would have gotten married like sensible people and it would have been easier. Well, less stupid, anyway."

"You might be right." Logan conceded. "But I've known Dick a long, long time and I'm of the opinion that drunk off his ass is the only way he would ever do anything as sensible as marry your sister."

"You could be right but _I'm_ never gonna drink." Heather insisted. "I can't risk being genetically predisposed to getting drunk enough to elope to Vegas."

Mac's arrival at their table turned the conversation.

"Hey, Mac. Tired of being a third wheel?" Veronica teased.

"I quit being a third wheel ten minutes after we got here. I've been playing chaperon ever since. Quite frankly, if Piz doesn't feel the need to look out for his own interests, what do I care if Parker wants a fling with a pretty Minnesotan?"

"With _Candy_?" Logan asked, skeptically. He cared shit-all about Piz but he was a bit protective of Parker.

"You're the one who insists he's not gay." Veronica shook her head.

"Gay? _Candy_?" Mac asked, her eyes growing wide. "Not!"

"I guess your tutelage has had an effect." Veronica said to Logan. "Personally, I think it's the hair."

"What about the hair?" Mac asked. "He barely has any."

"He shaved it all off a couple weeks ago." Logan said. "Ronnie thinks it's hot."

"It is hot." Mac said. "Like Adam Levine. I'll bet he looked great with hair. Why'd he shave his head?"

"You think he's pretty now? You should have seen him then. He had a Peter Petrelli thing going with his bangs. With a little lipstick and mascara he could have won America's Next Top Model." Veronica said, mischievously. "He thought Logan wanted him to."

"He thought…he…_Logan_?" Mac looked between then, very confused.

"He looked so gay Rickie Martin would've told him to tone it down." Logan explained. "Chicks saw him as competition instead of prey."

Veronica and Mac both frowned at him.

"_Prey_?" Veronica demanded, folding her arms across her chest.

"Dear God, get me out of this." Logan closed his eyes and turned his face and hands heavenward in supplication. Just then, the familiar chords of his favorite song filled the place.

"Saved by _I Hear the Bells."_ He said, jumping off his stool and reaching for Veronica's hand. "Thank you, Lord!"

As he and Veronica disappeared into the crowd before the stage, Dick and Melinda came tumbling out of it, laughing and gasping.

"Water!" Mel begged, as Dick grabbed a half empty beer and downed it.

"I think that was Veronica's," Mac said as he slammed the now empty cup back on the table.

"She can have it back, in about twenty minutes." He shrugged.

"Ew." Mac turned to Mel. "Well, what do you think?"

"It's so…low key." Mel said, looking around. "It's the coolest thing, ever."

"It's a fuckin' dump." Dick said. "I've seen garages that put more thought into the décor."

"But that's what makes it so cool!" Mel said. "It's the real thing, you know? It makes all those clubs we go to in L.A. look like they're trying too hard."

"You mean they get cleaned, once in a while?" Dick snorted. "Look at this." He pointed to a lumpy smear beneath the black paint on the wall. "That looks like puke. They just painted over it."

"It could be _Morris Days' _puke." Mel imagined. "Would you scrape that off the wall?"

"Um, yeah." Mac said as Heather nodded in sympathy.

"No way!" Mel insisted. "do you think the Cavern Club cleaned up John Lennon's puke?"

"They bulldozed it." Mac pointed out.

"Which is a crying shame!" Mel answered. "It should have been a national land mark!"

"That's true," Mac conceded. "But not because of John Lennon's puke. Although, I suppose when technology gets there, theoretically, we could have cloned him...is there DNA in puke?"

"This place is _daring_ you to find fault with it," Mel said, "just so it can say 'Fuck you, I'M FIRST AAAAAAAVE!" She raised both arms in the air, middle fingers extended as she screamed and shook her long dark hair. Dick laughed and grabbed her by the arm and they melted into the dancing crowd again.

Mac and Heather looked at each other.

"Sometimes I can't believe we're related." Heather said, moving away from the lumpy bit of wall.

"I know the feeling." Mac returned.

* * *

Logan and Veronica were on the far side of the dance floor, spinning slowly in each other's arms.

"I remember everything, you know." Logan suddenly said.

"What, like name, social security number, locker combination_?"_ she teased.

"Everything I said to you at Alterna prom."

She raised her head off his shoulder and looked him in the eye. "Do you?"

"Yeah. I didn't, not for a while. All I clearly remembered was you running away from me but…It all came back when I heard this song. It almost killed me the first time."

"Why?"

"Because it was so fuckin' _good_! '_Blood shed, lives ruined_.' Where did I _come up_ with that stuff?" He slapped his head in admiration of his own drunken eloquence. "I figured you must really _hate_ me to run after I said all that."

"I didn't hate you." She shook her head. "I ran because…I knew that if you kissed me…I was doomed."

"Doomed?"

"You have no idea what it does to me when you kiss me."

"I have a pretty good idea."

"But anyway, I came back." She reminded him.

"I know. You came back and I'd already ruined it and you ran again. That's kinda your thing."

"Not anymore. From now on, when I run; you're coming with me."

"Damn straight." He nodded, lowering his forehead to hers.

"Epic." She murmured. They swayed in each others arms for a few more seconds when Veronica suddenly straightened up. "The hell with this." She grabbed Logan's arm and with one fluid move, twisted it expertly behind his back.

"_OW! _Hey, what..?" he protested as she placed her other hand firmly on his shoulder blade.

"Just go with it." She said grimly, pushing him forward. "Trust me."

She roughly pushed him toward the manager's office, which years of training had taught her to automatically locate, along with all the exits and stairways within seconds of entering the building.

She rapped on the office door and when it opened, she flashed her FBI credentials.

"I'm sorry," she said brusquely to the two people inside. "I need your office for a spell to talk to this…person." She nodded at Logan as she shoved him into the room.

"Uh…what does this…?" the older of the two men in the office looked at Veronica's badge, uncertain.

"This doesn't need to concern the club at all, I'm not remotely interested in the guy selling weed in the corner near the bar or the gals soliciting near the men's room." Veronica assured them. "But this guy has info I need and it's been a _bitch _to catch up with him, so…if I can have the room for about a half hour?"

"Uh…certainly, Ma'am." The two of them looked at Logan, who tried hard to look guilty, rubbing the arm that Veronica had twisted behind his back.

"Pay no attention to any noise you might hear." Veronica said as they went out the door. "I may have to get rough with him."

"Do you need any help?" the younger of the two asked, glancing between Logan and the tiny little federal agent.

"What, with _him_?" Veronica sneered. "Don't make me laugh."

She closed the office door behind them and glanced over her shoulder at Logan as she flipped the lock. "We'll see who squirms now, big boy."

* * *

Seventeen minutes later, she opened the office door to find the two men standing right outside. They had clearly been trying to listen but she doubted they'd heard anything over the music.

"Thanks." She said with a short, professional smile. "I got what I needed_._"

"What about him?" the older man asked, looking uncertainly at Logan who really did have a rather shell shocked look about him.

"Him? He was very cooperative." Veronica shrugged. She jerked her head at Logan, who meekly followed her out of the office.

"Jeez, I think she really roughed him up," the older man said to his associate, watching as the two of them disappeared into the crowd on the dance floor. "Poor guy can barely walk."

* * *

At the upstairs bar, JR and Bryn were bopping to the music and watching the dance floor below. JR saw Veronica drag Logan into the managers' office. He kept half an eye on the office door but only in a professional capacity. What those two did behind closed doors was of no interest to him.

On the other hand, the pretty brunette next to him, bouncing along to Sunken Eyed Girl, was of extreme interest to him. He grinned. Catching his eye, she lifted her beer and returned the smile.

"Aren't you having anything?" she asked.

"Can't." he said. "Designated driver, remember?"

"Oh yeah." She giggled. "I can see why you like being a lackey so much. Oh! I meant aide de camp."

"Don't let the surroundings and my casual demeanor fool you," he said "My senses are on fire, scanning the crowd for any signs of suspicious behavior or personnel."

"On fire? Really. What constitutes suspicious behavior in this place?"

"I have no idea. I just trust that I'd recognize it if I saw it."

"Okay, I'll play." Bryn looked over the rail. "If some guy in an explosive vest comes busting through the door screaming 'your money or your life', does your job description entail leaping over the railing and throwing yourself between the marauder and your boss?"

"Heck no. But I would definitely be dialing 911 as fast as my fingers could fly while heading toot sweet for the nearest exit." _I would drill the mother fucker between the eyes with the small caliber hand gun I have strapped to my ankle but only if I didn't think Logan could get him first. _

He wished he could tell her that but he knew better.

"Toot sweet?" she laughed. "Would you at least make sure I got out safely?"

"I don't know." He sucked through his teeth. "The guy has an explosive vest! I think you're on your own."

"Well, it's good to know where I stand." She rolled her eyes. "You're not exactly the heroic type, are you?"

"Nah. I know." He nodded. "People are always shocked to find that out."

She laughed then said "Fortunately for you, I've been known to kill large spiders and even mice, on occasion, myself."

"You are _badass_!"

"Don't you forget it, Ratner."

* * *

Much later in the evening, the limo finally pulled to a stop on the parkway in front of the house. After the show, they had dropped off Piz, Dick, Mel and Heather at the five star hotel in downtown Minneapolis where Logan had booked them rooms. After that, they had dropped Candy off at a friend's place in Uptown, which wasn't too far out of their way.

Parker had hopped out of the car with Candy.

"I'll see you all in the morning!" she had chirped. "Candy's pal who lives here is putting on a show for some friends. He's a _rapper! _Can you believe it? Anyway, Candy says I can get a ride back to the house in like, an hour or two so don't worry, Veronica; I'm not bailing on your birthday party."

Then she slammed the door and ran up the walk where Candy was waiting by the door to an old brownstone apartment building.

"I suppose I could be insulted or offended by that," Veronica said, her head lolling on Logan's shoulder. "But I'm having way too good a time to care what Parker does."

"You think Piz knew she was gonna run off with that guy?" Wallace asked.

"Who cares?" Logan mumbled from his corner of the limo. "He ignored her all night."

"Yeah," Mac shook her head. "All that first rate flirting, completely wasted. He was too blown away by being in a Rock 'n Roll Icon to notice if she had thrown Candy down and taken him on the dance floor."

"Taken him on the dance floor?" Veronica gasped, scandalized. "Who would do such a thing?"

"Seriously." Logan giggled. "The manager's office. Now _that's_ the place-"

"This is just like the old days!" Veronica interrupted. "We could be on our way home from a school dance."

"I don't remember us rolling around in limos in the old days." Wallace pointed out.

"Not that part." Veronica scoffed. "It doesn't matter where we are, it only matters that it's us. Wallace, did you know that our little Mackie here has a thing going with one deputy Sheriff Leo D'Amato?"

"_Veronica!" _Mac cried, as both Logan and Wallace sat up and cried "Mac!"

"You used to be able to keep your mouth shut!" Mac laughed, throwing an empty plastic cup at her. "Do you have any idea how many of your secrets I could give away if I were so inclined?"

"To these guys?" Veronica gestured to Wallace and Logan. "Nary a one, Q. I'm an open book with this crowd."

"An open book?" Wallace snorted.

"An open book, locked in a safe, wrapped in a lead blanket, sealed in a concrete vault and dropped into the Mariana trench." Logan explained.

"Nonsense! I have trusted the people in this car with every aspect of my entire life." Veronica said solemly. "Except for the stuff that is none of your damned business."

"That's more like it." Mac said.

"Why don't you want anyone to know about you and Leo?" Veronica asked, bringing the conversation back on point.

"Yeah," Logan looked at his friend and business partner. "Tomato's a good guy."

"He hates being called 'Tomato'. It was bad enough when it was just Vinnie but now the entire department does it."

"All of Southern California does, ever since the San Diego Times put him on thier most eligible bachelor list." Veronica giggled.

"What do I gotta do to get on that list?" Wallace asked.

"You could blast the head off a known drug dealer, get a commendation and have your pretty face splashed all over local tv." Mac suggested.

"You ever make that list, in the days before you settled down and married Superfly, here?" Wallace asked Logan.

"Nope." Logan sighed, sadly. "And I'm suddenly wondering why not?"

"Everyone thought you were psycho." Veronica reminded him.

"What,_ that_ effects ones eligibility?" Logan looked shocked. "Bogus."

"Oh, don't worry, Sugar pants." Veronica pinched his chin. "In some circles, that makes you even more desirable!"

"Well, at least you don't have strangers asking you to autograph newspaper clippings featuring your mug and the headline 'Leo D'Amato, Balboa County's Hot Tomato'."

"That would be embarrassing!" Wallace laughed.

"To be fair, I'm not sure Vinnie even understands that it's not his name." Veronica said. "He _did _try calling him 'Tomahto'."

"He thinks Vinnie's stupidity is an act." Mac told them. "Leo doesn't trust him as far as he can throw him."

"Leo's pulled some interesting shit, himself." Logan said. "I don't think he needs to worry about Vinnie."

"I know." Mac nodded. Veronica and Logan exchanged a quick, nervous look. "Leo told me he's the one who...sold you...the, um..."

"Ancient history." Logan brushed off the reference to the key evidence in Aaron's murder trial, relieved that Leo hadn't told Mac about any other endeavors the two of them had collaborated on over the years. "I like Leo. You have my blessing."

"Thanks," Mac grinned "But I don't know..."

"What, trouble already?" Veronica asked. "What happened?"

"You won't understand." Mac said, giggling nervously.

"Probably not." Wallace agreed. "So let's talk about something else."

"Spill." Veronica commanded. "What sort of thing is a deal breaker for you?"

"STOP." Wallace put up a hand and looked seriously at Mac. "Is the answer to that question gonna scar me for life?"

"NO." Mac assured him.

"Damn." Logan sighed.

"Minds out of the gutter!" Mac ordered. "Last week, on ScyFy, they were airing a Firefly marathon and when I mentioned it to him, he said...he said..." she dropped her blushing face in her hands.

"What? What did he say?" Veronica demanded.

"If he said 'Simon is dreamy', then I agree; dump him." Logan opined.

"That Zoe is like, the perfect woman." Wallace said.

"She scares the shit out of me." Logan admitted. "I like that in a woman."

"WHAT DID HE SAY?"Veronica grabbed Mac by the shoulders and shook her.

"He said 'Echh'." Mac blurted, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. She looked at the dumbstruck faces of her friends. "So I just don't know if it can work out!"

There was a long, horrified silence in the back of the limo.

"Is...are you sure he knows what show you meant?" Wallace finally asked.

"Well that's bad enough, isn't it?" Mac asked.

"Not really." Veronica said, thoughtfully. "Just think of how fun it would be to show it to him for the first time."

"I _love it _when you say that." Logan sighed.

* * *

Back at the house, the four of them ended up in the living room, drinking ice water and eating cheese and crackers that Veronica had pulled out of the refrigerator.

"I need a shower." Mac said, shoveling a wheat thin with a slice of cheddar into her mouth. "I'm a sweaty mess."

"Me too. That was fun." Wallace said. "But I'm starving. This body is an efficient machine and all that exertion has me fuel deprived."

Having already grilled Mac on what was new in her life, Veronica started in on Wallace; how was he settling in down in San Diego? Did he get along with the coach?

"First of all V, I've barely met the head coach. I've been working mostly with the assistants. As the grad assistant, I'm getting tuition, room and board paid but I'm the program's gofer. I think my job will consist of every shit detail no one else wants to do."

"So, what? Are you having second thoughts?" she asked.

"No way! I'm having the time of my life!" He grinned. "To be a part of a DI program? Just to hang out at practice everyday will be a trip. I can't believe I'm getting my Masters for free when I'd pay them for the kind of access I'll have!"

He told them about his first few weeks on campus, before the start of the new semester. He was busy already but enjoying every minute of it.

"So how about you two? Married life seems to suit you both." he looked up from the cheese and glanced at them. Wallace had taken one of the big, deep arm chairs while Mac had dropped onto one end of the couch. Logan was at the opposite end of the couch, his feet propped up on the edge of the coffee table holding the food. Veronica had dropped into the middle of the couch but over the course of the last twenty minutes, had migrated closer and closer to Logan until she was basically leaning on him, facing Mac.

"So far, so good." she said.

"Married life is great; it's the equivalent of writing my name on the bottom of her foot." Logan said. "I don't spend my days in perpetual fear that she's gonna walk out on me again."

"I haven't done that in years." she elbowed him. "But it is really nice to have it all in writing."

"I'm considering having a homing device implanted in her neck." Logan went on. "I'd get one too, of course..."

"I probably wouldn't say this if I weren't still 90% drunk," Mac said, "But I've always known you two would be together forever; you're clearly destined to die in each other's arms, with your hands around each other's throats."

"We had that written into the vows." Logan nodded.

"Typical." Veronica shook her head. "People are always mistaking passion for anger."

"At least the way you two do it." Wallace mumbled, his mouth full of cheese and crackers. "What about the Honeymoon? I want to know about Australia!"

"Oh, yes. Do tell!" Mac encouraged. "Was it...magical?"

"Who doesn't want to go Down Under on their honeymoon?" Logan snickered. Wallace spit cheese and crackers all over himself.

"It was a blast!" Veronica said, pointedly ignoring the boys. "We flew to Hawaii and spent a few days on the North Shore of Oahu..."

"Makaha." Logan interjected.

"Yeah. Logan surfed a bunch of different beaches and I just lazed around, playing the lady of leisure."

"You did not do that." Wallace shook his head while wiping off his shirt.

"She didn't." Logan piped up. "She spent the mornings online researching all the places she wanted to see, then spent the afternoons dragging me around the island till I was so tired I could barely perform my husbandly duties at night."

"Too much info!" Wallace cried, covering his ears.

"What a shame," Mac sadly shook her head.

"I said 'barely'." Logan pointed out.

"He cowboyed up." Veronica chortled. "And it wasn't _every_ afternoon. I left you out on the water sometimes. I brought along a big stack of books and I read, Oh I think...six or seven of them."

"Six or seven?" Mac was impressed.

"Well, we were gone for three weeks." Veronica explained. "It was great! After Makaha, we flew on to Australia where we had planned on staying two full weeks at Mollymook..."

"World famous surf." Logan explained.

"It was beautiful." Veronica remembered. "But the waves were a bit unruly for Logan. We left a few days early."

"Really?" Wallace looked at Logan. "The Australian pipeline made you cry 'uncle'?"

"Yep." Logan smirked.

"Are you kidding?" Veronica said. "He wiped out so bad he was sandburned all over his legs and his board caught him right in the face! He came home that last afternoon looking like he'd been in a fist fight! The bruises hadn't faded much when we got back to Neptune ten days later. My dad took one look at him and said 'I told you, she doesn't brook sass.'!"

Logan laughed at the memory.

_Flashback_

_Logan walked up out of the surf, carrying his board. He was wet, tired and exhilarated. The waves on the southwestern coast of Australia were everything he'd hoped they would be. Glancing at the sky, he figured he still had an hour before Veronica expected him back at the beach house for lunch. He grinned. She had finally agreed to let him drag her out on the golf course. Her first lesson with the course pro was for 2:00. Logan thought she'd be a natural at the game (if there was such a thing) and considering it was played on some of the most beautiful stretches of land in the world, he thought she might actually enjoy it. It would be fun to finally be able to beat her at something._

_Daydreaming about exposing his competitive wife to the most difficult game of all, Logan didn't really notice the other people on the beach. He passed close by another figure in a wet suit without looking up._

_"Logan?" a once familiar voice said. "Logan Echolls? Holy shit!"_

_Logan stopped dead in his tracks, unable to believe his ears weren't decieving him. He slowly turned around and found himself looking into the clear blue eyes of his child hood best friend._

_"Duncan." he said. _

_Over the years, Logan had wondered how he would react if he ever saw Duncan again. This was the 'best friend' who had abondoned him, betrayed him, come between him and Veronica. The guy who had disappeared without a trace or a word of farewell. The guy who had shut him out of his life and thrown him to the wolves. The friend Logan had tried and failed to hang on to after he'd lost everything else._

_All the wondering and 'what ifs' melted away in the reality of seeing Duncan face to face. All the bitterness and anger were overwhelmed by the pure joy of seeing his best friend after all these years, a joy that was mirrored on Duncan's face. _

_The two young men threw their arms around each other, whooping and laughing._

_"Of all the beaches in all the world..." Duncan shook his head, incredulous. "I knew it! I _knew_ you'd get here eventually."_

_"How the _FUCK _did you know that?" Logan asked, a wide grin spreading over his face._

_"Come on, man! We talked about it all the time! How we were gonna travel the world surfing all the best beaches; South America, Senegal, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia!"_

_"Dude, that's a lot of beaches." Logan pointed out._

_"You don't remember." Duncan shook his head. "We actually pulled out my Dad's atlas one day and looked up places to surf in Australia. We decided on Mollymook together."_

_"I do remember that!" Logan lit up. "We even went online to see where we could stay! Holy shit." As he spoke, he realized that his Honeymoon destination was not the spontaneous decision he thought it was but had been brewing in his subconscious for years._

_"If anyone had known where to look for me, it would've been you, dude." Duncan said._

_"I had no idea." Logan admitted. "Have you been here, all along?"_

_"Name's Don Campbell, mate." Duncan said with a perfect accent, putting out his hand. "Live just in town w'me li'l girl. Her mum died in child birth so it's just me'n Lilly."_

_"Don Campbell?" Logan spun around, laughing. "I was sure you'd go by 'Jeffrey Lebowski'!"_

_"The Dude does abide, but they'd have found me within minutes if I took that name." Duncan scoffed. "I've discovered that when you're underground, simple and forgettable is best."_

_"Simple and forgettable. Yeah, that was always you."_

_They planted their boards in the sand, stripped down to their board shorts and sat on a large, warm rock in the sun, talking._

_"The truth is, I always thought you'd follow me." Duncan told him._

_"Why would you think that?"_

_"I don't know. Because that's what you always did?" Duncan laughed but Logan didn't. "I never dreamed that Lilly would turn four before she could meet her Uncle Logan."_

_"Uncle Logan?" Logan was stunned._

_"Of course! I couldn't take any pictures with me, but thank God for the internet! I show her pictures of Mom, Dad and you online. There are even youtube videos, although there haven't been any new ones in years. You've been staying under the radar. Of course, we can't access any of them from my laptop so she thinks the public library is where everyone goes to see pictures of their family!" Duncan laughed._

_"So you've just been...Mr. Momming it for four years?"_

_"Yeah." Duncan grinned. "You're not gonna believe this but...it's the most fun I've ever had. Hauling that plastic doll around for three days does nothing to prepare you for what it's like when you love someone more than life itself. She's the most amazing little person! She looks just like Meg but she's a pistol, just like Lilly. She's a little sweetheart who takes care of me as much as I take care of her. But I've missed you, man. What took you so long?"_

_"I didn't come here looking for you, Duncan."_

_"You didn't? You just showed up? Here. In Mollymook." Duncan laughed, clearly not believing the coincidence."Then what the hell brought you here?" _

_Logan hesitated just a moment before holding up his left hand. "I'm here on my honeymoon, dude."_

_"Your WHAT?" Duncan laughed, delighted. "Oh my God, will wonders never cease? You're MARRIED? I don't believe it. Congratulations, Man! Oh, she must be something else, huh?"_

_"You'd like her." Logan smirked._

_"Like her? I will worship at the feet of the woman who got YOU to say 'I do'. UnbeFUCKINlievable!"_

_Duncan never could inject his cuss words into the proper syllable. That made Logan laugh all the harder._

_"Yeah, I can hardly believe it myself." He said._

_"Are you happy? Do you love her?"Duncan lifted an eyebrow and teased "You didn't...have to marry her, did you?"_

_"I'm happier than I ever thought I could be." Logan nodded. "I love her like I love breathing and yes, I had to marry her or go insane. What is this, the fifties? No one 'has' to get married anymore, dude."_

_"Good. God, I'm happy for you, man. __Wow." Duncan shook his head. "You know, I almost didn't come down this morning. Lilly went off to a friend's house and I...wow. I looked for you for years. Every time I came to the beach. After a while, I guess I gave up on the idea but here you are; after four years. And I almost missed you!"_

_"You looked for me?_"

"_That surprises you?"_

_"You took off, Dude. You never even said 'goodbye'." _

_"Like I would say that to you?" Duncan shook his head. "It was never 'goodbye' with us. You knew that."_

_"All I knew is that one day you were gone and the feds were all over the place. They raked me over the coals a few times before they believed I didn't know anything."_

_"Sorry about that." Duncan didn't sound particularly sorry. "Keeping you in the dark was the only way to protect you. It's not like you didn't have enough to worry about those days."_

_"Fuck." Logan blew out his cheeks, acknowledging the truth of that statement. "I never looked at it that way."_

_"What? So, for all these years you've just assumed that I up and left without giving you a thought?" Duncan looked distraught. "Was I that shitty a friend?"_

_"You were the worst, dude." Logan nodded in mock sincerity. Duncan tried to shove him off the rock but he just laughed, saying "What was I supposed to think? You never even told me you and Meg...and then...?"_

_"Yeah. I guess." Duncan looked down at his hands for a moment, remembering why he and Logan had stopped talking about girls. "I wish it hadn't all gone down the way it did. But...the first time I ever held my baby..." he looked Logan in the eye. "I knew what I was going to do. They weren't going to let me near her. She's my daughter! I'd do it all again, in a heartbeat."_

_"God, man." Logan said, shaking his head. "Could that year...could high school have sucked any worse?"_

_"Hard to imagine how." Duncan agreed. "Although there were a few bright spots. You gotta come to the house and meet Lilly. She'll blow you away!"_

_"I'm sure of it, dude." Logan grinned. "I can't imagine some kid calling you 'dad'!"_

_"I know. She's the best thing that ever happened to me." Duncan smiled. _

_"No regrets?"_

_"I wouldn't say that." Duncan raised his eyebrows and leaned back on his hands. "On balance; no. I'd make the same choice every time. But that's not to say I don't miss things...people."_

_"I missed you, too. Even when I thought you were a mega prick, I missed you."_

_"That's when you missed me most of all, wasn't it?" Duncan said and they started laughing again. _

_"Do you keep in contact with your folks?" Logan asked._

_"We've kept...channels of communication open. It's not easy; the feds are watching them pretty closely and most likely always will be. It's far from perfect. There are some things I can't talk to them...ask them...about."_

_"That's too bad." _

_"Yeah...um..." Duncan looked as if he wanted to say something, then stopped, looking uncertainly at Logan._

_"What? Come on, dude; what?" Logan playfully shoved him._

_"Do you...do you ever see Veronica?" He blurted. "Is she okay? Did she ever get to Stanford?"_

_"Veronica is fine, dude. She's great." Logan watched Duncan's reaction carefully._

_"Good." He nodded, looking off across the surf. "Leaving her was the hardest part."_

_"I'll bet." Logan said, suddenly angry. _

_"I tried to talk her into coming with us." Duncan said, sadly. "I'll never understand why she wouldn't. She was convinced that we never would have made it out of the country together but I know we would have, I just know it! We loved each other and we both loved Lilly. We would have gotten away. I'll never understand why she wouldn't even consider it."_

_"You know why she wouldn't go; you said so yourself."_

_"What? When?"_

_"Dude; you loved Lilly enough to give up everything and every one else, including Veronica. She didn't love you!"_

_"Trust me; she loved me." Duncan smiled, smugly._

_"Trust me; she didn't."_

_"What do you know about it?" Duncan waved Logan off with a dismissive gesture._

_"When it comes to Veronica, I know...plenty."_

_"Jesus." Duncan looked at him in disgust. "Will you ever figure out that I didn't steal her? You lost her all on your own."_

_"Yeah, I did. But that was a long time ago. Look, dude; you and Veronica are not some tragic love story; you were puppy love. That's all."_

_"Fuck you! You have no idea how we felt...how we still feel about each other!"_

_"Feel? Holy shit, Donut." Logan shook his head in exasperation. " Veronica is married!" He felt a deep sense of satisfaction as Duncan literally reeled back as though he'd been assaulted._

_"Married?" he finally asked in a hoarse whisper. "She's married? How can she be married?"_

_"What the fuck? Did you think she was gonna pine away, dreaming of you for the rest of her life? Is that what you wanted? News flash, Einstien; she didn't waste a minute of her time pining. She was happy for you and Lilly but that's never what she wanted. _You_ were never what she wanted. You were just something she needed to get out of her system."_

_"Like you know anything about what she wanted?" Duncan snorted derisively._

_"She wanted ME." Logan held up his left hand. "She married me two weeks ago, idiot! I'm on my honeymoon _with_ Veronica. My WIFE."_

_Duncan stared at Logan, all the color draining from his face. His stunned shock was quickly replaced by a look of outrage and he launched himself at Logan, swinging both fists with an inarticulate roar. Duncan succeeded in knocking Logan off the rock but it was not a replay of the fight over Veronica they'd had back during their senior year. _

_In the intervening years, Duncan had lived a domestic life, taking care of his daughter. He stayed fit by surfing, biking and running. He made sure that he and Lilly ate a healthy diet. He was in good shape for a 23 year old single father._

_Logan had spent the last five years boxing, weight training and dabbling in martial arts. While growing up, he and Duncan had always been close to the same size. Although less than an inch taller than Duncan, Logan now outweighed him by a good thirty pounds. Thirty pounds of powerful, well trained muscle. And this time, Logan wasn't hungover._

_Rage and the fact that he'd landed the first punch were the only things that kept Duncan in the fight for more than a few seconds. His first punch hit Logan squarely on the cheekbone, knocking him backwards off the rock to land flat on his back on the sand. The wind knocked out of him, Logan didn't get up before Duncan landed on top of him, cursing and punching. Logan shook the sand out of his eyes and without much effort, knocked Duncan off of him and sprung to his feet._

_"Motherfucker!" Duncan spat, coming at him again."How could you do it? She was mine! You know she was mine! She loved me!"_

_"She never loved you." Logan blocked Duncan's wild swings and popped him in the head._

_"She never loved _you."_ Duncan growled, lunging at Logan again and knocking him into the rock they had been sitting on. "You always wanted what was mine! My family, my sister..."_

_"Of course I did, you fuckhole." Logan said, breaking the clinch Duncan had him in and knocking him away. "Compared to mine, the Manson family looked like a step up. I wanted out and you were there!"_

_"You were my best friend!" Dunan hissed, wiping the blood from his nose and pointing at Logan. "and you stole her from me!"_

_"I didn't steal her. You did't lose her; you never had her."_

_"Oh, I had her."Duncan sneered. "I had her plenty and I had her FIRST." _

_Logan knocked Duncan out._

_It was only for a few seconds; Duncan flew backwards, landing hard on his back in the sand, all the air whooshing out of him. He blacked out briefly but came to, gasping for air. Logan stood back, looking at him as if he were a bug Logan really hoped he wouldn't have to squash. Duncan didn't try to sit up; he lifted both arms and crossed them over his face._

_"I can't believe I lost her." he moaned._

_"You left her." Logan twisted the knife. "You claim you love her but you chose Lilly."_

_"You don't understand." Duncan shook his head and sat up. "Lilly is my daughter. Do you have any idea what it's like to love someone so much that you're willing to give up __everything and everyone in your life just to be with her?"_

_"Yes." Logan said evenly. "And the only one I lost was you."_

_Duncan frowned at him and shook his head then groaned, remembering Aaron's ill timed surprise party and Logan's ultimatum._

_"There you go, calling me a shitty friend again." Duncan grumbled, pulling himself up and sitting back on the rock. "Maybe I was. Sorry."_

_Logan sat down as well and began to brush the sand off his legs. Neither of them spoke for a while._

_"I don't know what I thought." Duncan finally said. "I guess...I sort of expected both of you to show up someday."_

_"Well, we did." Logan chuffed, mirthlessly. Duncan turned his head and glared at him._

_"Yeah, I guess you did." Duncan finally said, with a twisted smile. "It's not...how I imagined it, but God, it'll be great to see her again. Not a day has gone by that I haven't thought of her. And now...now she's here! God, just to see her, talk to her again..." As he spoke, Logan began shaking his head, a look of deep concern on his face._

_"Dude, you can't see her. She can't know where you are! I told you the feds raked me over the coals but it was nothing compared to what they did to her. She and the Sheriff came within inches of federal indictments!"_

_"That was over four years ago."_

_"There's no statute of limitations on kidnapping. You're an open file. The FBI will be after you until you win legal custody."_

_"Veronica won't rat me out. She didn't then and she won't now."_

_"Of course she won't but things are different, now."_

_"What?" Duncan sneered "Because she loves you, now? Because she's your wife?" he spat the words like invective._

_"No, because she's an FBI agent, herself."_

_"She's WHAT?" Duncan sat up, stunned._

_"Despite her involvment in your little adventure, she got into an intern program at Hearst and fast tracked training. She was sworn in just before graduation."_

_"That's awesome!"_

_"Yeah, it is. But it's also why you can't contact her. You can't let her know where you are."_

_"Dude, oath or not, you don't know her at all if you think she'd turn me in."_

_"I'm not worried about that. There's no way I'm gonna let you do that to her."_

_"To her? Do what?"_

_"She took an oath, Donut! An oath to uphold the law. What you want to do is make her break that oath, make her an accessory to kidnapping _again. _Damn it, Duncan; she's just starting her career and I'm not gonna let you hang this around her neck! She's not going to carry that burden for you."_

_"She would want to see me."_

_"She's never gonna know about this."_

_"You fuck! You're just afraid to let her see me!"_

_"Jesus, Donut." Logan rolled his eyes. "Have you always been this selfish?" _

_"Me? Selfish? What about you? The only reason she even looked at you was because I was gone. You know it and you're afraid that if she sees me again, wedding ring or not, she'll remember who she really belongs to!"_

_"You're a fucking idiot." Logan shook his head, standing and walking toward his board._

_"And you're an insecure, jealous prick!" Duncan launched himself at Logan's back, knocking him to his knees in the sand. Duncan tried to pin Logan down to pummel him but quickly found himself flat on his back again, bleeding from the mouth ._

_"I envied you for years, Duncan." Logan hissed in his face. "But I was wrong. Your shit was better than mine back then but it's not anymore." _

_"You're nothing but her consolation prize and you know it." Duncan growled as he climbed to his feet and swung at Logan again._

_"What I know," Logan said, blocking Duncan's wild punch and knocking him to the ground again, "is that when she thinks of you at all, she only remembers you as the guy who was standing next to me."_

_"Fuck you!" Duncan kicked out, sweeping Logan's legs and knocking him to the sand, where he jumped on top of him, jabbing at Logan's ribs. "You can't stop me from seeing her!"_

_"You have always been a selfish piece of shit." Logan said, knocking Duncan off of him and springing to his feet. "You hid it under that veneer of boring niceness but the truth is you felt entitled to take whatever you wanted, didn't you?" He threw Duncan to the sand and held him down, his arm across Duncan's throat. "You slept with Veronica the night of Shelley Pomroy's party even though you thought she was YOUR SISTER!__ You didn't care! You wanted her so you took her, you self centered asshole."_

_Duncan's eyes bulged in a combination of horror that anyone knew that story and the fact that Logan was cutting off his oxygen. He waved his arms and tried to choke out words. _

_"You have hurt her, enough." Logan eased up slightly on Duncan's throat. "I don't mind that she remembers you fondly. But I will NOT allow you to burden her with guilty knowledge, forcing her to break the oath she just took. You know damn well how seriously she takes that stuff. You're right; she'd never rat you out. But having that info would eat away at her over the years like cancer. If you loved her at all, you'd see that." With his last words, Logan removed his arm from Duncan's throat and stood up, glaring down at him as he gasped and choked for air, flopping in the sand like a landed game fish._

_"You made your choice four years ago." Logan said. "You ever want to see Veronica again, I suggest you come home and face the music. Until then, you come anywhere near her and I will kill you."_

_He stood over Duncan for a moment, then turned again for his wetsuit and board. A croak from the man on the ground caused him to look back._

_"I...ki..d...hmmm." Duncan gasped._

_"What?" Logan stepped closer._

_"I killed him." Duncan whispered hoarsely, his eyes glittering maliciously. "Your old man. I gave the order." _

_"Thanks." Logan's mouth quirked up at one end. "Saved me the trouble."_

_Then he grabbed his board and stalked off the beach, leaving Duncan lying in the sand behind him._

_End of Flashback_

"My poor baby was so beat up," Veronica pouted at Logan, " we missed what was supposed to be my first golf lesson that afternoon and we left Australia the next day."

"I'm beat." Logan said. "You kids stay up as late as you want but I've got kickboxing at ten and if I don't get some sleep, JR is gonna beat my ass."

"It's late and I need a shower." Mac stood up, as well.

Wallace and Veronica began cleaning up the cheese and crackers.

"Leave it," Logan suggested. "the cheese and cracker fairies will clean it up."

"That what you call mice around here?" Wallace asked. "Cute."

to be continued...


	19. Chapter 19 Makeovers

Chapter 19 Makeovers

Shortly after eight o'clock the next morning, Veronica went downstairs, where she was startled by what she found in the kitchen.

She stopped dead in her tracks, staring at the sight before her. The island was covered with all sorts of fresh fruit in various stages of being sliced and chopped and a wire rack was covered with warm muffins. None of this was particularly unusual, as JR always had a nice breakfast ready for them on the weekends. What concerned Veronica was the dark haired girl she was quite sure she had never laid eyes on before, who was pulling a second tray of muffins out of the oven.

"Is it true, then?" Veronica asked, walking into her kitchen. "There really is a breakfast Fairy?"

"OH." The girl jumped a foot in the air and almost dropped the muffin tin. She stared for a moment at Veronica, her dark eyes huge and panicky. Then they swept the kitchen and suddenly she started to giggle.

"I think I would have heard if there had been a rash of B&Es in the neighborhood where the only damage was a plethora of baked goods." Veronica said, cocking her head as she eyed the girl.

"Yep." The girl nodded, setting the hot tin on the counter. "You got me; I'm the muffin bandit. Damn, I knew my streak of successful home bake-ins couldn't last forever."

"Who _are _you?" Veronica asked. "And while I can see _what_ you're doing in my kitchen, I'm confused as to _why_ you're doing it in my kitchen?"

"Well, it's such a _nice_ kitchen." The girl said, gesturing at the room.

"You…couldn't help yourself?"

"This isn't so bad," the girl said, indicating the food all over the counter. "You should have seen the mess I made when I was assigned tooth fairy duty. Turns out, I can't tell a molar from a thumbtack."

"Ooh." Veronica winced, sitting on a bar stool.

"Yeah, it wasn't pretty." The girl shook her head sadly. "But my muffins are actually quite tasty."

As she spoke, she ran a butter knife around the edge of each muffin in the tin and flipped them out onto the wire rack to cool.

"Was that supposed to sound like a double entendre?" Veronica asked, getting a smile out of the girl but still feeling as though she still hadn't quite gotten a handle on the situation. Veronica reached for a grape and popped it into her mouth, eyeing the girl, who picked up a small paring knife. Veronica immediately grabbed another knife off the counter and held it defensively. The girl gave Veronica a look and picked up a kiwi, which she commenced to peel.

"Am I gonna have to get the pliers out before I get a straight answer out of you?" Veronica asked, tapping the knife on the counter. "Cuz I can go all Gitmo on you if I have to."

"Have you ever water boarded anyone?" the girl asked, curious.

"I've never done it," Veronica said slowly. "But I've _been_ water boarded, so I'm pretty sure I understand the mechanism."

"Is that part of FBI training?"

"No, just a really bad dating experience."

"Eh." The girl said, sympathetically. "I hate it when a guy invites you to play doctor and while _you're_ thinking Dr. Dreamy, _he's _thinking Dr. Mengele."

"Clearly, we could do this all day but I really need to know who. You. Are."

Before the girl could answer, the back door opened and JR came into the room.

"Ah, Mars. Good morning! I see you've met my friend, Bryn, who has been kind enough to agree to help me this weekend, what with all the additional house guests."

"Damn, JR." Bryn frowned at him. "Your timing sucks." She looked at Veronica and twinkled. "I was about to drop my knife and bolt for the door, yelling 'Suckers!'"

"Oh, I wish you had! I haven't drawn my weapon on a fleeing suspect, yet." Veronica nodded in appreciation. "So…you're a friend of JR? I didn't know JR had any friends."

"I am wounded, Mars," JR said with a smirk. "I make friends everywhere I go."

"Not everywhere." Veronica told him, picking up a strawberry and chomping on it.

JR was prevented from coming up with an answer to that by the entrance of Mac. She stumbled into the room and climbed onto the stool next to Veronica. JR picked up a knife and began to help Bryn with the fruit.

"Mmmm…food." Mac said by way of 'good morning' and reached for a banana. Veronica hopped off her stool and the pair of them went out to sit on the sun dappled patio.

"You're up early." Veronica mentioned, as Mac pulled on the sunglasses she had brought downstairs with her.

"But not exactly bright eyed." Mac groaned, stretching out in her chair. "And the tail has seen bushier a.m.s. I had forgotten how Parker snores."

"Oh, so our prodigal sister returned?"

"Yeah, she rolled in an hour or so after we went to bed. She tried not to wake me up but she kept _giggling."_

"Giggling? Uh oh." Veronica raised an eyebrow. "Is Piz' story history?"

"It doesn't look good for our boy."

"Candy." Veronica shook her head. "I'm going to have to get my gaydar over hauled."

"He's a stealth poacher."

"He wants to be an…esthetician." Veronica told Mac. "His dream in life is to get his training at the Aveda institute and become a cosmetologist to the stars."

"So you've already split the kid's head open and pried out all his secrets?"

"Not me; Logan."

At that, Mac tipped down her sunglasses and peered at V. "This is getting curiouser and curiouser."

"I know." Veronica nodded.

Bryn came out onto the patio, bearing a tray with mugs and a pot of fresh coffee, which she set on the table and commenced to pour out for each of them.

"Speaking of curious," Veronica said. "Bryn! Explain to me how a lovely, charming and clearly intelligent lass such as yourself comes to be palling around with the likes of Jeff Ratner."

"He lives in your house; don't you vouch for him?" Bryn asked, setting the coffee pot on the table.

"His honor, integrity and character? Absolutely." Veronica said. "It's his personality I have trouble with."

"Mr. Mars seems to get along with him." Bryn pointed out.

"Mr. Mars has a knack for taming the prickly." Mac suggested.

"I…_Hey." _Veronica looked at Mac, who sipped her coffee; the picture of innocence behind her RayBan's.

"How did you and JR meet?" Mac asked Bryn, ignoring Veronica's glare.

"We met at the Calhoun Yacht Club. My brother introduced us." Bryn smiled.

"There's a yacht club?" Mac asked, looking at Veronica, who shrugged.

"Of course." Bryn looked mildly surprised at the question. "Would you like me to bring you a virgin Mary? It's great for hangovers."

"How does JR know your brother?" Veronica pressed.

"They did some business together." Bryn said, enigmatically.

"I'd love a virgin Mary." Mac said, pouring herself some more coffee. Bryn smiled and went back to the kitchen.

"Something about that girl bothers me." Veronica said to Mac.

"Why? She seems perfectly nice to me."

"Yes. She's perfectly nice, quick on her feet, smart and pretty. In short, she's way out of Ratner's league and I see nothing but trouble coming of this." Veronica frowned.

"What makes you say she's out of JR's league?" Mac teased. As Logan's partner in Gradeyourass, Mac had spent more than a few late nights at the Neptune Grand, going over site changes, advertising proposals and content. Over the years, she had come to appreciate Ratner and his symbiotic relationship with Logan better than the rest of his friends. Knowing Veronica, Mac understood that while she resented JR's presence and Logan's dependence on him, she was also deeply appreciative and grateful for his dedication to and concern for Logan's welfare. Mac had been there from the beginning, when JR and Veronica's relationship was marked by class room competition; two blunt personalities rubbing each other the wrong way. She had seen that competition morph into a more personal turf war over Logan Echolls. It amused Mac to no end to watch Veronica and JR behave like jealous siblings, striving for the attention of one beloved parent.

"Nice, smart and pretty?" Veronica cocked an eyebrow. "Come on. What does she see in him?"

"In JR? He's smart, funny and cute." Mac grinned.

"Cute? You think JR is cute?"

"Not everyone is attracted to the chiseled Adonis type, Bond."

"I know, but the pencil necked, curly haired, snarky type?"

"Wow. When you put it that way, I can't believe I never asked him out myself." Mac said dryly. "He's cute. Ask anyone."

"Huh. I never noticed."

"Please." Mac snorted. "The only man you've noticed since you were seventeen is Logan Echolls. All the rest of them are an amorphous blob, divided into two categories; the innocent and the guilty."

"That is so not true." Veronica shook her head.

"Fine. The innocent and those _suspected_ of being guilty." Mac conceded.

"I was actually nineteen." Veronica corrected her. "And it won't make Logan happy at all if JR gets tied up in knots over some heart breaker."

"Right." Mac nodded. "It's _Logan's_ welfare you're worried about. Nothing to do with JR."

"JR can take care of himself." Veronica snorted.

"He seems to be doing a bang up job of it." Mac agreed as Bryn returned with two large virgin Mary's. She set them on the table with a smile. Veronica watched her return to the kitchen.

"If she breaks his heart, I'll have her deported." She grumbled to Mac.

"But just on principle, not because you care at all about JR." Mac clarified.

"Of course not. I just like to abuse power."

* * *

A half hour and a virgin Mary later, Mac was feeling much better as she and Veronica talked and laughed on the patio. It was already warm and humid and it promised to be a day made for hanging at the lake.

"Good morning, girls!" Parker sang as she came through the back door. "Guess what Candy did!"

"Guess _what_ he did, or _who _he-" Veronica's voice died away as she and Mac gazed at Parker in shock.

They had last seen her entering the old brownstone apartment building with Candy, her shining hair bouncing on her shoulders as she dashed up the walk. Now she stood, batting her eyelashes coyly as she struck a pose against the back door.

Her long blond locks had been replaced by a dark brown pixie.

"What do you think?" she asked.

"Were you raped?" Mac asked in a tiny voice. Veronica turned her stunned eyes on Mac but Parker burst out laughing.

"No, you dingbat! Ugh. That's another reason I'm glad I did this; cutting one's hair should not bring about flashbacks of sexual trauma. Choosing to get my hair cut is further proof that I have recovered and retaken complete control of my life! I refuse to be a slave to the length of my hair or hide behind it any more."

"So we can see." Veronica said, frowning at Mac. "That's…quite a different look for you."

"I KNOW." Parker bounced over to the table and poured herself a cup of coffee. "And I LOVE IT."

"It's…short." Mac said.

"Yep. Total departure from the old look." Parker sipped her coffee confidently. "I think it's just what I needed to shake myself up. Seriously, what do you think? Pixies are the hottest trend in Hollywood right now; Emma Watson, Ginnifer Goodwin, Carey Mulligan…if it works on them, why not me?"

"Actually…" Veronica looked critically at Parker. "It does. It works really well on you."

"I KNOW." Parker laughed, delighted. "I mean_, your_ short hair is completely adorable! I haven't been able to tear my eyes off it since we got to town. One of the girls there last night had also just cut her hair short and guess what? Candy's the one who cut it! So as soon as he said it would look good on me, I knew I was gonna let him do it!"

"Candy cut your hair?" Mac asked.

"YES. And his friend Nat colored it." Parker squealed. "I had SO MUCH FUN."

"Is Nat a boy or a girl?" Veronica asked, curiously.

"Natalie. Girl. But there was another girl there named Roy, who seemed to hate me on sight and some guys named Duke, Zack, Nick and…Felix? I don't remember. Once the hair stuff started, most of them left and Zack went to bed. Anyway, Nat is a recent graduate of this place Candy wants to get into…"

"The Aveda Institute." Veronica nodded at Mac in a '_what did I tell you?' _way.

"…Yeah. " Parker nodded, "… and she had just done Zack's hair and she had all the stuff and so I figured 'in for a penny, in for a pound' and BOOM whole new me! _I'm so excited_."

"Couldn't tell." Mac deadpanned. "You play your emotions so close to the vest."

"I was terrified to look in the mirror when I woke up this morning." Parker admitted. "I mean, I wasn't drunk or anything and I loved it last night but you know; cold light of day and all? But when I saw it this morning, I loved it as much as I did last night. Candy is a genius!"

"So…what about Piz?" Veronica asked.

"What about him? I think he'll like it, don't you?"

"Well, you're kinda gushing about this new, super cute dude you spent the night with…" Mac suggested.

"Oh please." Parker dismissed the idea with a look of disgust. "Candy? As if."

Veronica gave Mac an _I knew it _look as Parker poured herself some coffee.

"He's got a huge crush on someone else." she said, spooning some sugar into her mug.

"Aha! I knew he had a crush on Logan!" Veronica crowed. "My gaydar isn't broken."

"Honest to God, Veronica." Parker said, raising an eyebrow. "You're such a dope."

"Why? I don't mind if darling boys have crushes on my husband. God, I love saying that; _my husband_. Besides being inevitable, I think it's cute."

"Your husband." Mac parroted, giggling.

"Candy has a huge crush on _you_." Parker said, witheringly. "And I gotta tell ya; I'm sick of it."

"What?" Veronica and Mac said in unison. Mac burst out laughing but Veronica looked indignant.

"Yeah." Parker nodded. "I flirt my heart out all night long and just when I start to panic, thinking _I can't do this; I don't want to cheat on Piz, _it hits me; he's not asking any questions about _me_. He's pumping me for info on _you and Logan_. So I flat out ask him and he admits it like it's nothing; he thinks Logan must be the coolest guy on earth cuz he's married to the 'hottest babe'" Parker rolled her eyes as she did air quotes, "Candy's ever seen."

"Bond!" Mac choked with laughter, pointing at Veronica.

"No way." Veronica said, flatly. "I'm just a cover."

"I don't think so." Parker shook her head. "Candy wants to figure out how he can get a woman like you and who better to learn from than the guy who got you? I don't know why I don't hate your guts."

"This isn't my fault." Veronica said.

"Why do you care?" Mac asked Parker. "Didn't you just say you didn't want to dump Piz for Candy?"

"Yeah. So? I just wanted to make Piz jealous. Candy's cute and...well…he was there. Not that Piz even noticed. I think he'll notice me now, don't you?" she giggled as she ruffled her new short hair.

"How is any of this my fault?" Veronica asked. "Why hate my guts?"

"Oh come on!" Parker heaved a loud, melodramatic sigh. "When I first crushed on Piz, who was he Mooney for?"

"He thought I was a cartoon super hero." Veronica snorted, dismissively.

"Like Angelina Jolie." Mac pointed out, unhelpfully. "I hear guys think she's fakey and stupid."

"Then, I made the _brilliant _decision to date _what _multi millionaire who's been in love with _who_ since he hit puberty?" Parker went on sarcastically.

"Not puberty." Veronica mumbled in protest. "He was older than that."

"And now Candy?" Parker went on. "How many times have I thrown myself at a guy who's staring all gooney eyed at you? That's another reason I decided on the new look. I'm so over being a poor man's Veronica. Maybe I do hate your guts."

"You know Piz's crush on me had no bearing on reality. He couldn't wait to dump me as soon as he got to know me." Veronica said. "He_ loves_ you."

"We'll see." Parker said with a shrug.

"_Please_ don't break up with him this weekend." Veronica asked. "That will totally wreck my birthday to have broken hearts bleeding all over my hard wood floors."

"Gross." Mac nodded.

"I'm not gonna dump him." Parker said. "I just…you don't know how lucky you are, Veronica."

"Yes I do." Veronica said firmly. "I _do_."

"It only took her five years." Mac snickered.

"You shut up." Veronica pointed at Mac. "You're thinking about dumping a hot, sweet, totally stand up guy over a TV show that was cancelled eight years ago."

"What? _What?"_ Parker's head shot around to stare at Mac so violently her short hair flew. "MAC. You've been holding out on me!"

"It's not a 'TV show'." Mac said indignantly. "It's an entire way of looking at the world."

"It's a _TV show."_Veronica insisted. "You and Max were in sync on all that sci-fi stuff and you two looked at the world from _completely _different perspectives_."_

"Who are we talking about?" Parker asked. "I knew you dumped Max but _who are we talking about?"_

"Holy tights, Batman." Mac sat back in her chair, stunned. "You're right."

"I'm always right." Veronica said, smugly. "When are you gonna remember that and listen to me once in a while?"

"We'd all be in prison if we listened to you once in a while." Parker said before turning her attention back to Mac. "Whoooo?"

"I thought Max and I were a match because we like all the same…but we don't have the same ideas about the world, do we?" Mac said, wonderingly. "I believe in Mal and he believes in_...Niska."_

Veronica sipped her coffee, looking very superior.

"Are you still speaking English?" Parker asked.

"I have to go call Leo." Mac pushed her chair away from the table and went back into the house.

"Leo?" Parker looked at Veronica. "Who's Leo?"

"Who's Leo?" Veronica looked at Parker. "Who are _you_, you dusky haired beauty?"

* * *

Later in the morning, Wallace joined JR and Logan in the basement gym for the Saturday morning kick boxing lesson. Veronica used the excuse of house guests to skip this week's session.

"Come on, Superfly." Wallace teased. "How often do we get a chance to mix it up in the ring?"

"You may be a DII college athlete, my friend but I am trained in personal combat." She said, loftily. "I don't mind embarrassing Logan and JR in the ring week after week but you? You're my little Wallace…I couldn't do it."

"Couldn't do it is right." Wallace snorted, heading down to the gym.

"Besides, I gotta to do my nails." Veronica called after him.

* * *

By early afternoon, the entire crowd was down at Lake Calhoun. They had eaten lunch at the Tin Fish and afterward, Logan, Dick, Wallace and Heather went over to the beach to try wind surfing. Mel and Parker rented a canoe and paddled off toward lake of the Isles, leaving Veronica, Piz and Mac sitting under a tree enjoying the breeze off the water. Piz had been understandably stunned when he'd laid eyes on Parker earlier in the day. He'd spent the last two hours feeling gobsmacked every time he looked at her. Parker was enjoying the effect her new look was having on him tremendously.

They watched the girls paddle off across the water and he turned to Mac and Veronica. "What the hell happened last night?"

"She had a makeover." Mac shrugged.

"How does that happen in the middle of the night?" Piz demanded.

"What makes you think she didn't get up this morning and dash right off to a salon?" Veronica asked. "Stranger things have happened."

"Did she?" he asked.

"What difference does it make?" Mac asked. "Don't you like the new look?"

"I…of course I do. She could shave off all her hair and tattoo a map of Greenland on her scalp and she'd be beautiful." Piz shrugged. "It's just…kind of a shock, is all. She never mentioned…if she had any plans…"

"It was a spur of the moment thing, Piz. Parker is very spontaneous, you know." Veronica said.

"Is it that easy to get a spontaneous makeover first thing on a Saturday morning around here? Because that is _not_ a Great Clips hair cut."

"You can tell?" Veronica quizzed him.

"I'm not a novice; I've put in my time in the chair, remember?" Piz indicated his own head of hair. "Where did she get it done?"

"You thinking of another remodel, Piznarski?" Veronica asked. "Had second thoughts on the About a Boy look?"

"I just think it's…strange." He looked sad. "Did either of you notice how weird she was acting last night? I mean, she barely spoke to me. I think she's mad at me and I don't know why."

"Because you're a guy and she's not." Mac said. "Sometimes that's all there is to it."

"I tried to talk to Wallace about it…"

"Oh, good call." Veronica laughed. "Wallace lives for that kind of touchy-feely, heart to heart stuff."

"Yeah, we didn't get very far."

"And you thought _we_ would?" Mac asked.

"Not really, no." Piz admitted, flopping backwards into the grass. "But you're Parker's best friends so I figured you were the ones to ask; is she gonna dump me?"

"She's not going to dump you." Veronica said. "She just wanted to shake herself up."

"Well she sure as shit did that." Piz shook his head.

"I think she looks spectacular." Mac said. "The new color suits her."

"Yeah…" Piz agreed, sitting up. "I think…"

"It'll get easier; the first time always hurts." Veronica cracked.

"I think she's got a thing for that guy, Candy." He blurted.

"She doesn't." Veronica shook her head.

"Yeah, she does." He said, convinced. "She never left his side at the club last night—"

"You noticed that?" Veronica winced.

"Of course I did. She was hanging all over him. I really hoped, right up until the minute the limo drove off, that she would change her mind and stay at the hotel with me. She didn't even say 'goodnight'. She was practically sitting in his lap."

Mac and Veronica studiously avoided looking at each other.

"And then, the next time I see her, the very next morning?" Piz went on "I barely recognize her! That's not a warning sign, it's a two by four upside the head."

"Um…" Mac said, helpfully.

"So cowboy up, Piz!" Veronica leaned forward and punched him in the arm. "Fight for your girl! Don't let some fly by night Midwestern pretty boy take her away from you! When she and Mel get back with that canoe, take her out on the water yourself and romance the living hell out of her! Sweep her off her feet! Just don't...knock her out of the canoe."

"Really?" he looked at the two of them. Veronica nodded confidently while Mac looked like a deer caught in the headlights. "I shouldn't just…bow out gracefully and let her have what she wants?"

"She's a woman!" Veronica said. "She doesn't know what she wants! You have to tell her." She jabbed at the air, punctuating each word.

"Maybe I should talk to Dick." Piz said. "When it comes to girls, he's the only one of my friends who seems to live in the real world."

"Girls hate Dick." Mac reminded him.

"Yeah but he's managed to stay married to one for years." Piz pointed out. "And Mel is more like Parker than either of you two will ever be."

"Mel is more like Dick than either of us will ever be." Mac mumbled.

"Do you really want to be the first person in the history of the universe to ask Dick Casablancas for advice? About _women_?" Veronica asked. "Seriously?"

Piz looked at her for a long moment.

"I'm so fucked." He finally said.

"Ask her to marry you." Mac blurted.

"Like she wouldn't see through that." Piz snorted. "I just got my foot in the door of the business I want to build my career in, I can barely afford the rent on a studio apartment above a coffee shop that stinks all the time and you think I should get _married_? That _reeks _of desperation! A proposal at this stage of my life would be the biggest insult I could give her."

Mac and Veronica looked blankly at each other.

"I don't understand boys." Veronica shrugged.

"You don't understand _girls_." Piz said.

"Well no one understands _them_." Veronica chuffed.

"This is why I prefer computers." Mac said.

* * *

Over on Main beach, Logan and Heather were watching Dick and Wallace try to get the hang of surfing with a sail. The wind was high and the water choppy and it was extremely entertaining watching them wipe out.

"So tell me," Logan said as he flopped down on a blanket next to Heather. "The boyfriend; real or imaginary?"

"Oh." Heather blushed. "Ah, real. It's just...he's not exactly my boyfriend."

"Good." Logan nodded. "You're too young for all that nonsense. Stay away from boys. They're nothing but trouble."

Heather stared at him, one eyebrow raised.

"Seriously!" he said. "I've never known one yet that didn't belong in prison."

"He's not like that," she said. " He's nothing like you guys."

"Good. You're way too smart for guys like us." Logan shook his head and ran his fingers through his wet hair. "So, what's the problem? He has a girlfriend? He hates you? He's dating your best friend? He suspects you murdered his best friend? All surmountable obstacles, believe me."

"Huh? Why would he think I murdered his best friend? Sometimes you don't make any sense at all."

"Yeah, but I'm not the one with the imaginary boyfriend."

"He's...I...this is so embarrassing." She giggled nervously and wrapped her arms around her legs.

"Everything about high school is embarrassing. Sometimes I think the whole point of it is to become inured to humiliation."

"I thought you liked highschool." Heather looked confused.

"Are you kidding? Flashbacks still give me the flop sweats."

"Dick says you ruled the school."

"The King of the Idiots is still an Idiot."

"Are we talking about you or Dick?"

"Either way." He shaded his eyes and looked at the idiots on the water. He chuckled as Wallace wiped out again.

"Dick says you guys had a blast in high school."

"Dick had a blast. I had a hangover." Logan really didn't want to go into the details of why his high school experience had been so bad. He enjoyed Heather's innocence, naivete and optimism. No point in weighing her down with the stories of death and destruction that defined his own teen aged years.

"But you were popular." she said, as though that were the Holy Grail of Happiness.

"Popularity just means that your phone rings a lot. Telemarketers perform the same function."

"No, it means people like you and you get invited to parties and stuff."

"Not really. I was popular but no one really liked me."

"You're funny!" Heather laughed, suddenly realizing that he must be teasing her. She simply couldn't imagine people not liking Logan.

Logan sighed, blowing out his cheeks. "What's wrong with him?"

"He's...in the chess club." Heather looked mortified. "And he's a mathlete."

"Oh my God." Logan looked as though she just said he was a cannibal.

"You laugh but that's exactly what everyone would say if they knew."

"How did you ever cross paths with such a specimen? Do Dick and Mel let you run wild?"

"At my summer job at the Marina. I knew from school that he's a total math dork. We made fun of him and his friends all year. At first I ignored him which was easy cuz he's not even cute but he's like, the smartest, funniest guy I've ever hung out with. His Dad is a mechanic and he's...um..."

"What? If he's not a mass murderer, he's not the worst high school kid I've ever known."

"He's not!" she shook her head at his silliness. "He's just... Mexican. It's no big deal."

"OH." Logan knew exactly how big a deal dating a Mexican mathlete was at Neptune high. Social suicide. Even Lilly Kane, Queen of all Neptune, had kept her relationship with Weevil a secret and Weevs at least had being leader of a bad ass gang of motorcycle thugs going for him. A mathlete was bad enough, but no one could recover from dating a underpriviledged egg head with a Hispanic name. Not in Neptune.

"So...maybe you can just be friends." Logan suggested.

"I doubt it." Heather nodded, sadly. "When I'm out with my friends now, they all seem boring and stupid and I think about him all the time but one day some of them came by the Marina and I was mean to him in front of them. I'm such a B."

Logan knew exactly what she meant. "You know, you could just...go for it. Who cares what Neptune high thinks of you?"

"Are. You. High?" she asked, horrified. "I have to survive three more years there."

"Yeah..." Logan stared out at the water as Dick wiped out again. Wallace seemed to be doing slightly better. "There was a girl when I was in high school who didn't give a shit what anyone thought. She was the coolest girl in school but people made things really rough on her."

"And you were nice to her because that's the true meaning of cool and since you were so popular, pretty soon everyone else realized how cool she was too?" Heather suggested, hopefully.

"No, I was the worst." Logan admitted, looking at Heather. "She was the coolest girl I knew and I was terrible to her."

"Jesus, Grampa! Why'd you read me this thing?" Heather demanded, appalled.

"Everyone's a jack ass." Logan assured her.

* * *

Veronica, Mel and Mac walked over to the beach after Piz and Parker paddled off under the bridge toward the Lagoon and Lake of the Isles. There, they joined Heather and the guys while Dick tried to teach Mel how to wind surf. Less than a half hour later, Piz joined them, soaking wet with the makings of a large bruise on his shoulder.

"Where's Parker?" Mac asked. Piz shrugged.

"Last I saw, she was walking off that way." He waved vaguely toward the other side of the lake.

"I specifically told you _not_ to knock her out of the canoe." Veronica admonished.

"I didn't." Piz said. "She jumped. You know canoes. It flipped. Practically killed myself trying to get back in it. Finally just towed it back to shore. By the time I got there, she was half way to that other beach. You didn't tell me she left the limo with Candy."

"Why did she dive out of the canoe?" Veronica asked, trying to avoid the land mine.

"I DON'T KNOW." He looked genuinely confused. "I told her she looked great. I said the new color was amazing. I asked her where she got it done. I was pretty surprised to hear that she went home with Candy last night, thanks for telling me, by the way and I said that he was really talented."

"You did?" Mac asked. Veronica groaned and closed her eyes.

"Yes! Next thing I know, she's diving, the canoe's tipping, I'm drowning and she's gone. What the hell happened is any body's guess." Piz shook his head in confusion.

"You aren't...bothered by the fact that the guy she danced with all night took her home with him and talked her into cutting off all her hair?" Veronica gently asked.

"Why would I be bothered by that?" Piz asked. "I trust her with other guys."

"You mean Parker?" Dick asked, joining the group as Mel and Heather took the sailboards out. Wallace and Logan were cheering them on. "Her new look is smokin'. What about it?"

"Piz just found out Candy cut Parker's hair." Mac told him.

"Wow!" Dick reeled back, laughing in amazement. "_That's_ a move I'd never think to make."

"A move?" Piz asked. "What do you mean?"

"It wasn't a move," Veronica assured Piz. "Candy really wants to be an esthe-"

"Dude!" Dick shook his head as though he couldn't believe how dense Piz was. "Do you have any idea the level of trust between the stylist and the stylee?" Dick demanded of Piz. "I've known mine for ten years and I'd let him blow me if he were a chick. Any one who can be that gentle with this head would be gentle with the other-"

"Dick, it wasn't a move!" Veronica shouted him down. "Candy's actually trying to get into the Aveda-"

"You think he was coming on to Parker?" Piz demanded of Dick.

"Hells yes! I'd fuck up a dude who tried to give Mel a _foot massage, _I don't even _know_ what I'd do to some random guy who wanted to _cut her hair_!"

"Really?" Piz, Mac and Veronica all looked at Dick.

"Damn straight!" Dick insisted. "Think about it; running his hands through her hair, looking into the mirror all cheek to cheek; combing it, letting it fall through his fingers, whispering how good it'll be, soothing her nerves, telling her to relax...total foreplay, dude."

"Eww!" Mac and Veronica cried but Piz looked very disturbed.

"I didn't...I never thought about him...actually _doing _it." he stammered.

"Hey." Dick nodded knowingly. "What's hotter than a chick combing her hair? Besides a naked chick, combing her hair, I mean. A chick combing _another_ chick's hair. Especially if they're both naked. Only last night, _it was a dude."_

"Nobody was naked!" Veronica said.

"You sure about that?" Dick asked.

"I don't feel so good." Piz said.

"It was _just a haircut_!" Veronica said, a little frantically. "Piz. You know you can trust Parker!"

"Sure." Dick nodded. "Trust Parker. But the Candy Man?" He shook his head. "That's a sinister nickname, dude."

Before Dick could put any more lurid thoughts in Piz head about what went down the night before, Wallace and Logan stormed the group still on the sand. In a moment, Logan had Veronica tossed over his shoulder and carried her out into the water, ignoring her wriggling protests. Even Piz laughed as Logan tossed her through the air into the waves. Piz had a thoughtful look on his face as Logan dove into the water after her and they came up, locked in an embrace. Soon every one was in the water, cooling down from the blazing sun, splashing and dunking each other.

Soaking wet, Mac stumbled out of the water, falling onto one of the beach towels they had laid down. After a minute or so, Piz joined her, shaking the water out of his hair.

"So, you could probably go meet Parker somewhere out there," Mac suggested, nodding toward the far side of the lake. "Get a little one on one time?"

Piz didn't answer right away. He looked at the group in the water, particularly Logan and Veronica. She had tried to come in out of the water again and Logan had picked her up, spun her around and fallen into the waves with her in his arms. They came up kissing.

"Good idea." He finally said, firmly. He stood up, nodded resolutely to Mac and started off around the lake in the direction that would bring Parker to him.

* * *

Back at the house, JR and his assistants were working on dinner. Several bags of chips were ready for the freshly made guacamole and salsa and JR was laying out several platters of cheese, crackers and salami slices. A large cooler full of beer on the back patio relieved everyone of the chore of having to walk the six steps into the kitchen to the refrigerator.

"Can I have one of these?" Fin yelled from the patio.

"No. Set up those other chairs." Bryn yelled back from the kitchen. "Thanks for letting me bring him along," she said to JR. "He's grounded again and Mom and Dad had some church committee thing they had to do. Leaving that kid alone at home isn't a punishment, it's just begging to get our home owner's insurance cancelled. Last summer, he tried to slam dunk using a glass topped patio table as a base. He crashed through it and needed forty two stitches on his leg."

"It's no problem." JR said. "We'll work him like an indentured servant and he'll be yearning for the quiet solitude of his bedroom at home. Forty two stitches? He's lucky he didn't cut his femoral artery and bleed out."

"Yes. How very fortunate." Bryn deadpanned as only an older sister could. "Do you have any more heavy stuff we can make him haul from one end of the yard to the other?"

"Give him a broom and have him sweep off the basketball court." JR suggested.

"He's more likely to do it if you're the one giving him orders."

"No way. He likes me. I'm not ordering him around!" JR protested.

"Is Fin really the member of my family you most want to impress?" Bryn asked.

"Is there no way I can remain in the good graces of all of you?"

"Being intimidated by my baby bro is no way to impress me."

"Looks who's talking." JR scoffed. "You're afraid of him!"

"You know, I let it pass last night when you said I was on my own in the event of a maniac in an explosive vest. I'm beginning to think you might be a great big pussy."

With a sigh, JR went out into the back as Bryn tended the nearly three dozen brats simmering in a large, beer enhanced pot on the stove. She smiled to herself, thinking it was a good thing JR had met her; he had no idea how to cook a brat. He had gone to the trouble of finding Kramarczuk's Deli just over the river, downtown but having the brats on hand was only the first step. As every midwesterner worth his or her salt knew, the first step to a decent brat was simmering it in beer. Only after a long, hot soak were the dogs ready for the grill. Bryn had also spent the afternoon whipping up a large batch of her mom's excellent potato salad.

JR came back in just as there was a knock at the front door. He continued through the house and opened the door to Candy.

"What do you want?" He demanded.

"You're rude." Candy said, indignantly.

"You crashed the party last night and now you're back just in time for dinner." JR said. "Part of my job here is to prevent people like you from doing things like this."

"God, you suck." Candy whined. "I didn't come for dinner. I left my rip stick here last night. I just came to get it back."

"You left your lip stick?"

"Ugh. My _skateboard_. I need it back."

"Fine. Get it and get lost."

"I can't." Candy waved at the front yard. "I left it right inside the hedge but it's gone. Where'd you put it?"

JR shrugged.

"Can I come in and look for it? Please?" Candy sighed, exasperated. JR opened the door wider and stepped aside. Candy walked past him, looking around. JR followed him through the house. "Man, I'm just looking for my wheels, you don't have to hover over me!"

"I gotta make sure you don't do anything creepy." JR said. _Like planting bugs or cameras or help yourself to a souvenier to add to the Mars shrine you've no doubt set up in your sad little apartment. _

_"_What the fuck do you think I'm gonna do?" Candy demanded, walking into the kitchen, twitching as though JR were a mosquito buzzing around his head. "I just want my board!"

"Skateboard?" Bryn asked, nodding toward the backyard windows. "Is that it?"

In the back yard, Fin had stopped sweeping the driveway court and was looping in lazy circles on a rip stick.

"Unnggh!" Candy moaned and flung himself out the back door.

JR pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the new text. "They're on their way back. Is everything ready?"

"Pretty much." Bryn said, looking around. "I'd make a killer caterer, you know?"

"All part of being a killer aide de camp." JR grinned. He looked out into the back yard. "Oh crap." Instead of taking his board and leaving, Candy was demonstrating some flip techniques to Fin. "I gotta get that guy out of here."

* * *

Piz and Parker rejoined the group on the beach about forty minutes after Piz had gone off. Piz then took out a sail board, demonstrating more aptitude than Wallace or Heather.

After another hour or so, they were hot, tired and hungry. They had been at the lake most of the afternoon and were ready to head back to the house. Most of them started back up the parkway on foot while Logan and Dick loaded the surf equipment onto the Range Rover.

"Dude, this is fun and all but you gotta miss the big waves." Dick said, hoisting a board onto the roof rack. "Not that the lake isn't cute but come on!"

"Yeah." Logan nodded. "It's a completely different sport. Right now, I'm just enjoying the change."

"It is pretty sweet here." Dick looked around. "I haven't seen so many hot blondes in one place since we crashed the Budwieser auditions at Universal. But seriously, you come back and we'll make a surf weekend of it; just like old times."

"Just like old times?" Logan raised an eyebrow.

"Well, not the tail chasin' part." Dick said. "I tell you what, brohiem; being married sure does take the pressure off. Now we'll be able to concentrate on surfing!"

"So; nothing like old times, in other words."

* * *

The group on foot was in no hurry. They meandered up Dean Parkway, enjoying the cool under the trees. No one had to carry anything, since they'd tossed all the towels, sunscreen and beach paraphernalia into the Range Rover for Logan and Dick to bring home.

Heather, Wallace and Piz marched on ahead while Parker, Veronica and Mac loitered behind.

"Okay, what did Piz really say to make you knock him out of the canoe?" Veronica asked when the boys were far enough ahead not to overhear.

"Oh, nothing." Parker giggled. "He was being all sweet and understanding."

"God, I _hate it _when they do that." Veronica said, shaking her head in sympathy.

"It's just..." Parker laughed. "You know, I guess I just forgot that it was Piz I'm dealing with."

"I know what you mean," Veronica said. "I frequently forget it's him when I'm talking to him."

"Ha. You're so funny." Parker said. "I admit it; I was trying to make him jealous. That might work with nine out of ten guys but it's never gonna work on him. He's not the jealous type. He's rational and evolved. I took his lack of jealousy as not caring that I went off with another guy when all along it was really him trusting me!"

"The Piz-centric point of view!" Mac nodded, wisely.

"I thought I wanted him to get all macho and territorial but that's just not him." Parker sighed, happily.

"Ahh. You prefer the soft, sweet Piziness of him." Veronica nodded.

"Softness doesn't mean weak, Veronica." Parker pointed out. "Piz and I have always operated on a different level from..."

"From me and Logan?" Veronica chided. "I know. Good thing, too."

"I'll say." Mac put in. "If we all wanted the same things, we'd all fight over the same people."

"That's right!" Parker nodded. "I found out years ago that I really _do not like _it when a guy uses his fists to solve problems!"

"And I love a man who beats the snot out of people." Veronica sighed, batting her eyes.

"And I've discovered that I prefer life on the right side of the law." Mac said.

Wallace, Piz and Heather waited for them at the far end of the park, where the path split and both directions lead to water but they weren't sure which lake was the way home. Veronica directed them to the left, up the hill to Cedar lake.

"Later, I'll take anyone who wants over to Lake of the Isles," She said. "It may be the prettiest of all."

The group walked along the lake path to the house. This close to dinner time, there were just a few stragglers left on the beach. Just as they crossed the parkway to the house, the Range Rover slowed to a halt and Logan and Dick whistled appreciatively as the girls crossed the street in front of the car. Wallace and Piz started up the front walk.

It was at that moment that Candy came out the front door, his board tucked under his arm.

Parker saw him and waved.

"Hey, Parker." Candy smiled. "Your hair looks awesome!"

"I know!" Parker said, looking down, modestly.

That's when Piz punched Candy in the mouth.

to be continued...


	20. Chapter 20 WWLD?

Chapter 20 WWLD?

"Dude." Dick breathed, in awestruck tones. "This is the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes on." He and Logan had pulled the Range Rover into the garage beside the Ferrari. Logan was pulling towels and beach bags out of the back while Dick circled the cadmium yellow sports car.

"Seriously, you have _got _to let me take this for a spin!"

"Seriously? No I don't." Logan dropped another bag onto the garage floor.

"Whoa. That is an awesome car." Fin said, standing behind Dick.

"Who are you?" Logan asked, slightly startled by the appearance of a strange adolescent in his garage.

"I'm Fin."

"What do you want?"

"I want to drive this car." Dick said. "I _need_ to drive this car!"

"I want to drive it too!" Fin said. "If you still have it when I get my license, can I?"

"No. And not only because I have no idea who you are." Logan shrugged. "What are you doing in my garage?"

"I work for JR." Fin said with a belch.

"Oh, great." Logan's expression lightened up considerably. "Take all this stuff into the house." He indicated the pile of beach accouterments on the floor of the garage and in the back of the Range Rover. Fin got to work as Dick ran his hands through his hair, practically drooling over the Ferrari.

"Get the keys." He looked frantically at Logan. "I'm taking it out!"

"Dude, you can drive that car when I can sleep with your wife."

"Really? _Mel!" _Dick hollered toward the house. Mel, who had come through to the patio, sauntered over.

"I was making a point, not a deal," Logan laughed, shaking his head.

"What up?" she asked, running her eyes over the sports car.

"Logan says I can drive his Ferrari if you sleep with him!" Dick donned his best shit eating grin and grasped his hands in prayer, looking hopefully at his wife.

"You sleep with him; I wanna drive it." Mel said.

"Neither of you are driving my car and I'm not sleeping with either of you." Logan said, firmly. "And I don't even want to explain this conversation to Veronica; she'd kill all three of us."

"Don't worry, she's out front," Mel said, walking slowly around the car, examining the lines. "…breaking up a fight."

"What?" that got the attention of both men.

"Yeah, Piz and Candy were slapping the shit out of each other when I came in the house." She said, absently.

Dick and Logan looked at each other, their eyes shining with glee, then turned and bolted for the house.

"It isn't as hot as it sounds." Mel yelled after them. "Seriously Dude; I'll blow you if you let me take it around the lakes!"

Logan didn't break his stride and disappeared through the kitchen but Dick skidded to a halt, turned around and marched back toward the garage.

"Mel!" he yelled. "You're not supposed to do that with other guys!"

"Dick; _look at this car."_

"You're my wife! There are rules, you know!"

"What?" she planted her fists on her hips. "You were okay with me _sleeping _with him."

"That was different!"

"How?"

"_I was gonna get to drive it!"_

* * *

Logan burst into the kitchen and stopped, disappointed; Candy sat at the island, holding a bag of crushed ice to the lower part of his face while JR glared at him.

"What happened?" Logan asked JR.

"I don't know." JR answered, still glowering at their uninvited guest. "I heard a scream, looked out the window and saw Piz slapping at Alice, here. By the time I got outside, this one was curled in a ball on the ground, whining like a baby and Parker was tearing a few new holes in Piz, who was sulking like… another, slightly less traumatized baby."

"He HIT me." Candy cried, incredulously. "No one ever HIT me before."

"Not that they didn't want to." Logan said.

Wallace came into the kitchen from the living room.

"Where's Veronica?" Logan asked him.

"She and Mac hightailed it upstairs." Wallace said, throwing a look of disgust at Candy. "I'm pretty sure they didn't want our two American Gladiators here to hear them laughing."

"That guy was in a fight?" Fin came out of the back hall, where he'd been hanging all the beach towels to dry. He looked at Candy, unimpressed. "I could take him."

"Big deal." Logan said. Fin nodded, acknowledging the underwhelming nature of the achievement. "Did you get everything out of the car?"

"Yup."

"What the hell is wrong with you?" JR leaned over the island counter and growled at Candy. "I told you to go home."

"Hey, I was leaving. He ATTACKED me." Candy whined, indignantly.

"It wasn't much of an attack." Wallace said. "I took harder hits under the boards every day at practice and that was from my own team mates."

"It was a ferocious attack." Candy insisted. "I didn't even _do_ anything."

"Are you wearing mascara?" Logan asked, peering closely at him.

"What?" Candy sat up. "NO. Oh, wait…" and he peeled off a false eyelash. Wallace's expression didn't change but he slapped a hand over his mouth. He carefully avoided looking at Logan as he knew from long experience that to meet his eye now meant losing all control.

"Shit, where's the other one?" Candy mumbled, rubbing his eyelid and looking around the counter and floor.

"Oh fer fucks sake." JR shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I was just showing Roy how to apply them." Candy said, defensively.

"That's one of your many skills?" JR demanded. "Go back to shopping at Abercrombie."

"DUDE." Candy said with as much dignity as he could muster with a fat lip "You have NEVER seen a celebrity in a photo shoot who wasn't wearing falsies."

"That's true." Logan smirked.

"THIS is the guy Piz picks a fight with?" Wallace demanded, shaking his head. "_Ophelia_ could kick his ass!" He said, referring to Weevil's ten year old niece.

"Ophelia could kick _my _ass." Logan said. "I actually think Piz chose wisely."

Just then, Bryn came back in from the front, where she had brought a wet cloth to Piz, for his knuckles.

"Christ on a crutch," she said, throwing the wet cloth in the sink. "It's pretty obvious those two don't have brothers." Just then, she caught sight of Fin, standing next to Logan. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN HERE?" she barked.

Both Logan and Fin jumped.

"I live here?" Logan said in a tiny voice, trying to hide behind Fin.

"I'm with him!" Fin hooked a thumb at Logan.

"GET OUT." She pointed at the back door and Fin skedaddled. "You can stay." She smiled at Logan who visibly relaxed and looked at Wallace. Seeing the look on Logan's face, Wallace finally lost it and burst out laughing. Ignoring both of them, Bryn took a look at Candy's lip, rolled her eyes and said, "You're fine. I seriously doubt it will leave a scar." She tossed the ice bag into the sink and picked up a tray of cheese and crackers.

"Come on, JR;" she carried the tray out toward the patio. " Let's get these guys out of the kitchen so we can start on dinner."

"I like that girl!" Wallace said, watching her go.

"Me too." JR said, picking up the tray with the guacamole and salsa on it. Before following Bryn outside, he leaned toward Candy and hissed "Get out."

"I'm going." Candy slid off the bar stool. "If that _monster_ will let me pass."

"I think the monster is willing to let things be." Logan said, watching Piz cower beneath the tongue lashing Parker was administering on the other side of the window. As they looked, Parker whirled around and marched into the house and up the stairs. Piz dropped into one of the chairs on the front patio.

"I'll go out this way," Candy said, backing toward the kitchen door.

"Are you kidding me?" Wallace demanded. "Get out there!"

"This way." Logan commanded as he grabbed Candy by the shoulders and steered him toward the front. "You've survived your first fist fight with barely a scratch. Shoulders back! Chin high! Man up and get out there."

"Nngh Unnggh!" Candy whined but allowed Logan to shove him toward the front door.

* * *

Upstairs, Parker marched into Veronica's bedroom, where her two best friends had laughed themselves to tears.

"Can you believe that?" she demanded, shaking her head as she dropped onto the bed between Mac and Veronica.

"And right after you were extolling Piz's advanced state of evolution, too." Mac giggled.

"I know." Parker frowned.

"They're men." Veronica shrugged. "Deep inside, they're all still comfortable in caves."

"I know…it's just…" Parker looked at the two of them and grinned. "Is it wrong that I LOVED it?"

That convulsed Veronica and Mac in paroxysms of laughter again. Parker joined them.

They were all still laughing when Bryn came in.

"Uh…the guys are all down in back and wondered if you'd care to join them before they eat all the guacamole?" she asked. "They sent me to look for you just in case…"

"Just in case I was still in banshee mode?" Parker asked.

"Pretty much." Bryn smirked.

"What do you make of this, Bryn?" Veronica said. "Parker here has been known to dump a guy for engaging in fisticuffs. But today, when big, macho Piz punched out pretty little Candy, it turned her on. Make any sense to you?"

"Wha-, the two cases were totally different!" Parker objected.

"They were." Mac nodded.

"But the behavior was the same." Veronica insisted.

"Doesn't matter." Bryn said, shaking her head. "Haven't you ever heard the story of the Blue Rose?"

The three women on the bed shook their head.

"Once upon a time," Bryn said, sitting down in an arm chair near the bed, "There was a beautiful princess whose father insisted that she take a husband. She promised him that she would marry, but her stipulation was that she would only marry a man who brought her a blue rose.

"Since the princess was not only very beautiful, but charming and intelligent as well, every prince for miles and miles wanted to marry her. When they heard her challenge, they all set out to scour the world for a blue rose.

"The first prince brought her a large, priceless sapphire, carved in the shape of a rose.

"The princess looked at it and said 'This is only a sapphire, carved to look like a rose. I have enough jewels.' And she sent him away.

"The second prince brought her a beautiful china vase, with delicate blue roses painted on it. 'This is a _vase_,' the princess said. 'When the man I will marry brings me a blue rose, I'll put it in this vase.' And she sent him away, too.

"A third prince, who was very clever, dipped the stem of a white rose in blue ink, drawing it up the stem until the bloom turned blue. The princess wasn't fooled. 'This is not a blue rose but a white rose, masquerading as such.' And she sent him away, too.

"Finally, the man she loved came to court. He presented her with a plain white daisy. All the courtiers laughed but the princess didn't laugh. She took the daisy, turned it in her hands, smiled at him and said 'Now, _that's _a blue rose!"

Mac and Veronica both nodded in approval.

Parker frowned and said "I don't get it."

"This time it was Piz throwing the punches." Veronica said, elbowing her.

"Yeah; instead of catching them." Mac guffawed. "With his _face."_

_"_You _love _him!" Veronica chortled.

"Did they live happily ever after?" Parker asked Bryn.

"No, the guy with the daisy knocked her up and then took off with the town slattern." Bryn said, sarcastically.

"After the wedding, the guy probably never did anything right again for the rest of his life." Mac said.

"Or… they lived happily ever after." Veronica suggested.

"Wow." Mac and Parker stared at her. "Marriage has really mellowed you."

"No; marriage to _Logan _has mellowed me." She corrected them. "Now, come on; that guacamole isn't gonna eat itself."

"Be pretty gross if it did." Mac mumbled.

* * *

Heather, having watched the great slap down until Parker and JR intervened, walked up the drive way to the back yard. She had been exploring the garden and the fountain when the back door opened and Fin came back out to the patio. She raised her eyebrows at the sight of him as he picked up a basketball and headed for the court he had recently swept clean.

"Hey." She said, coming toward him. "Who are you?"

"I'm Fin." He said, nonchalantly demonstrating his ball handling skills by dribbling between his knees. "You one of the Admiral's friends?"

"Yeah."

"Me and my sister are helping JR while you guys are here this weekend." Fin said. "He seems kinda young to be an admiral."

"JR just calls him 'Admiral Moneybags'." Heather explained. "His real name's Logan Eh…Mars."

"Oh, _riiiight_." Fin was about to say something else when both kids were distracted by noises coming from the garage. "What's that?"

Fin and Heather walked to the open bay and when their eyes adjusted to the light, Fin burst out laughing and Heather gasped, clamped her hand over his eyes and dragged him away from the door.

"Hey, it's okay!" Dick yelled from inside the garage. "We're married!"

"Oh my gawhahawd!" Fin doubled over, laughing.

"I don't care how married you are!" Heather yelled. "Close the damn door, next time!"

"_Next time_?" Fin shrieked, laughing "There won't be a next time! Moneybag's will KILL them if he finds out what they're doing on the hood of his Ferrari!"

"Omigod, DON'T TELL LOGAN." Heather turned to him. "He really will kill them!"

"I won't tell." Fin promised, gasping for air and wiping his eyes. "Let me take another look…"

"NO." Heather grabbed him and pulled him back toward the patio. "You are waay too young to see a thing like that!"

"I'm gonna be fourteen!" he objected but let her pull him across the yard.

"Sure you are." She said. "And I'm gonna be twenty one someday."

"Ha ha. I'll be fourteen in October."

"Really?" she looked him up and down. "I turned fifteen in June."

"I thought you looked younger than my sister." Fin nodded, satisfied with his judgment.

"You're really short." She informed him.

"I know." He shrugged. "But I make up for it in awesomeness."

* * *

Piz was slumped dejectedly on a chair on the front patio, feeling like an ass. He was trying to understand what had come over him the moment he saw Parker and Candy smile at each other. He was still staring blindly at the lake when the door behind him opened. He didn't move but a moment later, Candy flounced past him and started down the front walk.

"Hey, man." Piz said. Candy looked over his shoulder, stopping a safe distance away. "I'm really sorry."

"You are?" Candy asked, his eyes sliding left and right as though expecting an ambush.

"Yeah. I've…I…I've never done anything like that before. I don't know what happened. Are you okay?"

"Oh. Uh…yeah." Candy rolled his shoulders. "I'll probably be stiff for a few days but I'm okay."

"I hit you in the mouth; why would you be stiff?" Piz asked.

"Oh yeah." Candy stopped rolling his shoulders and worked his jaw. "I mean my jaw will be stiff. Are you okay?"

"You didn't hit me."

"Yeah, I did." Candy insisted.

"Oh. Yeah, I'm…I'm fine. Look; I'm not making excuses for my behavior but you tried to move in on my girl."

"The fuck I did!" Candy said, indignantly but almost immediately his shoulders slumped and he said "Oh …yeah, I guess I kinda did."

"You totally did." Piz said. "Still...You're not the first guy and you won't be the last. It's just...it never bothered me like that before. I mean, I never punched a guy out for it before."

"Yeah, no one's ever gone all Van Damme on me like that before, either."

"Sorry."

"Me too; sorry I had to mess you up." Candy said, magnanimously.

"You didn't..." Piz shook his head. "Whatever. I'm used to guys noticing Parker. It's no excuse for violence. I don't even believe in violence."

"You don't? Dude, pick up a newspaper. That's like saying you don't believe in water."

Piz stared at Candy for a long moment, then shook his head. "I mean I don't believe that violence solves problems."

"Sure as fuck solved my ass. I won't be the guy who takes her away from you. But if they tried before, it'll be even worse now. Her new look is way hotter."

"Yeah. She said you did that? You're good."

"Well, come on; one look at her bone structure and anyone could tell that short hair would totally work to her advantage. Her eyes look twice as big now and the darker color really flatters her skin tone. She needs to stick to neutral earth tones on her eyes and I told her to get away from the pinks and more into corals for her lip color."

"Huh…" Piz looked blank. "…so the hair cut wasn't just an excuse to get closer to her?"

"That would be unethical." Candy said, coolly summoning all the dignity his narrow shoulders could bear while conveniently forgetting why he wanted to be an esthetician in the first place.

"Yeah." Piz shook his head sadly. "I am really sorry about this. I don't know what came over me. I didn't plan it or anything. The minute I saw you two smile at each other, it's like an evil spirit took over my body. I looked at you and I thought 'what would Logan do?' and the next thing I know, I'm knocking your teeth out."

Candy listened to him, blinking. First he checked his teeth, then he walked back up to the patio and dropped into the chair beside Piz.

"You beat me up because you thought that's what Logan would do?" he asked.

"I _know _that's what Logan would do." Piz smiled ruefully. "That's what Logan did. To me. A few years back."

"You tried to steal Logan's girl?" Candy's eyes widened in awe.

"No! Sort of. Not really. It's complicated."

"Dude." Candy leaned forward, conspiratorially, "I only stole your girl friend because _I thought _'what Logan would do?'!"

"Really?" Piz looked shocked. "But Logan wouldn't steal Parker; he doesn't want her."

"The girl doesn't matter; stealing her is the thing!"

"What?" Piz stared and shook his head. "I don't get it. Why?"

The two of them sat and talked for quite awhile. Candy described his own predicament to Piz and how and why he had chosen Logan as a role model and Piz related the inauspicious beginnings of his own friendship with Logan and how once Veronica had stopped screwing everyone over, they had all become pretty close. By the time Piz got to the story of Veronica's abduction and what he still referred to as The Great Desert Rescue, he and Candy were getting along like a house on fire.

So Parker was understandably confused when she came looking for Piz and found him, sitting where she'd left him but instead of stewing in his own juices and mulling over his bad behavior, he was deep in animated conversation with his erstwhile opponent on the field of honor. Only a few seconds of listening convinced her they had bonded while swapping Logan stories.

"Um...everyone's out back." she said, when the two of them finally noticed her. "There's food and stuff."

"Oh, great. Thanks, sweetie." Piz said. "I'll be there in a minute. Oh, hey!" he looked at Candy. "Are you staying for dinner?"

Parker glared at Piz for a second then smiled brightly at Candy and said "Oh, yes! You should definitely stay."

"Nice try, Beautiful but we're onto you." Piz chuckled.

"Nah." Candy said. "If I walk back in there, JR will kick my ass. I've had enough of that for one day."

"Me too!" Piz laughed. "See you tomorrow?"

"Maybe." Candy stood and picked up his rip stick. "Lookin' good, Parker."

"You too, Candy." she said. She raised an eyebrow and looked at Piz as Candy hopped on his board and zipped away.

"Let's eat!" Piz turned for the door. "I'm starving."

They walked through the house to the back patio where Mac, Mel, Heather and Veronica were seated at the table eating chips and guac and Dick, Logan, Wallace and Fin played two on two in the drive. Piz slid his hand around to the back of Parker's neck, pulled her close and kissed her.

"You do look_ fantastic_." he said with a smile before going over to court side.

"Has the sun come out again in Pizneyland?" Veronica asked. Parker looked speculatively at her.

"I don't hate you, Veronica." she said with a smile. Then she glared at the men hooping in the drive way. "I hate Logan."

* * *

After the appetizers were gone, Wallace beat Mac at back gammon, Fin owed Heather a thousand dollars after she'd hustled him at Mario Kart and the members of the party drifted into the house to use the various showers to scrub off the layers of grit, grime, sweat and sunscreen that built up over the course of a hot summer day. Feeling clean and refreshed, Veronica found herself back on the patio with Heather, who had also been early into a shower.

"Cute top." Veronica nodded at Heather's bright pink ruffled tank.

"Thanks. It's Mel's. I love stealing her clothes."

"I'll bet. I never had a sister but I did used to love wearing my friend's clothes." Veronica thought briefly of the times she would raid Lilly's closet. Lilly had never approved of Veronica's style. Too staid, too sweet, too dull. _Lilly wouldn't even recognize me now. But I think she would approve._

She gave herself a mental shake; she was in no mood to be overtaken by maudlin nostalgia. She decided to hone her interrogation skills.

"So, how are things at old Neptune High?" she asked Heather. "Logan tells me there's a boy..?"

"Ugh." Heather turned as pink as her top. "I can't believe he told you about that. It's so embarrassing! Why couldn't I fall for a nice, rich, white boy that all my friends would approve of?"

"You have a major crush on a poor, minority boy whose not even popular? What else is wrong with him?"

"What, Logan didn't tell you the part about him being a mathlete who's also on the chess club? He left out the best part."

"Actually, all Logan told me was that he was afraid you had a boyfriend."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"He didn't tell you I'm obsessed with a socially unacceptable dork?"

"Nary a word. Logan would never betray a confidence, not even to me." Veronica informed her. "You, on the other hand, are not a very difficult lock to pick."

"Guess not." Heather sighed. "Might as well tell you the best part; he's Mexican."

"A poor, chess playing, Mexican dork... Is he good at sports? Can he play the guitar? On the student council? Too cute for words?" Veronica threw out as many bones as she could think of to give the girl some hope.

"Nope, nope and nope." Heather shook her head. "I can either ignore him and hope my crush goes away or I commit social suicide as a sophomore."

"Wow. Been there, done that. Didn't even get a t-shirt." Veronica shook her head sympathetically. "I lived through it, though. The good news is high school doesn't last forever."

"I've got _three years _left." Heather's expression clearly conveyed the eternity three years represents when you're fifteen.

"How much do you really like this kid?"

"I don't know. He's really smart and funny and he makes me laugh all the time. It's just fun to be around him at work, even when we're not talking. He's nice, too. I didn't used to think he was remotely cute. I mean, I wouldn't have noticed him in school at all if we hadn't been making fun of all the dorks. I don't know why I never noticed his eyes. He's got the nicest brown eyes and his lashes are so thick they look fake. And his smile... I keep hoping some nice, rich 09er will make me forget about him but since I started hanging out with him at the marina, all the other boys seem boring and stupid."

"That bad, huh?"

"Yeah. Dick and Mel would think I was out of my mind. They might even send me back to Mom."

The two of them sat in silence for awhile, just enjoying the quiet of the early evening.

"You know," Veronica finally said. "I thought I was in love when I was your age. But it just...went away. You're going to change a lot in the next few years. The guy I was crazy about in tenth grade bored me silly half way through senior year. He left and I barely missed him. It's possible that all the feelings you have for this boy may just disappear and no harm done. Very few people really fall in _love_ while they're in high school."

"What if I'm one of them?" Heather said, sadly.

"Well, on the other hand," Veronica sighed, "I also know how it feels to realize you're watching the love of your life walk off into the sunset and if you don't do something quick, you'll never see him again. I don't want you to ever know what that feels like."

"I wish I had the guts to find out what this is."

"Guts are required. When I was in high school, there was this guy...he was one of the popular kids but he fell for a girl who could accurately be described as the class pariah."

"What's that?"

"Let's just say that if she had been a Mexican mathlete, it would've been a huge step up. If the rich kids had only ignored her, that would've been okay but they _hated _her and went out of their way to remind her of that, every day."

"Like how?"

"Do I really have to go into the gory details?"

"No. I know." Heather said, heavily. "They wrote stuff on her locker door, called her names, threw her clothes in the toilet during gym class..."

"Wow. Nice to know some things never change." Veronica winced.

"I used to think Neptune was such a nice place."

"Yeah. But this boy...I have no idea why, but he fell for her. They tried to keep it a secret and then one day he brought her home for what he thought was just going to be dinner only to find that his dad had thrown a surprise party for him and when the two of them walked in, all his friends were there. They were so horrified that he had that girl with him that instead of yelling 'surprise', there was dead silence."

"Oh, freakers." Heather groaned. "What happened?"

"It would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to have made fun of her. To side with all his friends. But instead, he put out his hand to her," Veronica demonstrated the gesture dramatically, "and drew her into the room, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind that he was with her. One person made a crack and he told them all that if anyone had a problem with his girlfriend, not only should they leave but that...they weren't his friend anymore. It was the bravest thing I had ever seen."

"Wow." Heather breathed. "Please tell me everything worked out okay, 'cause Logan told me a story this afternoon that had a _horrible _ending."

"Eventually, but..."

"_But?"_ Heather cut her off, her brow lowering. "What do you mean 'but'? There shouldn't be any 'but' on the end of a story like that!"

"Well, they were young and dumb and they both did stupid things..."

"_Like what_?" Heather cried. "If he loved her enough to stand up for her in front of everyone, what could she have done to wreck _that_?"

"Actually, she dumped him because..."

"WHAT? WHY? If ANY one was ever brave like that for me, I would _forgive him_ _anything!_ What the hell was wrong with her? No wonder her class mates hated her. I HATE HER. I hope she died a lonely old crone because it's all she deserved! Jeez, you two tell _the worst stories I've ever heard_."

"It's okay, it all worked out!" Veronica tried to calm Heather's agitation.

"What, he forgave her after _that_?" Heather looked disgusted. "He might have been heroic but he was also pretty stupid."

"He wasn't stupid. She was stupid but she loved him and begged him to take her back and he did because he loved her!"

"I'm not sure I want him to. He deserved better than that."

"Yeah." Veronica said, meekly. "She knows that."

"What the _hell _is wrong with people?" Heather muttered. "Logan was right."

"What did he tell you?"

"That everyone in high school is an asshole." Heather's face suddenly cleared. "But you just told me about someone who wasn't. Logan must not have known about that guy."

"Actually," Veronica smiled. "He thought that guy was the biggest asshole of all."

* * *

Logan came out of his room, freshly showered and buttoning up a short sleeved, pale peach silk and linen shirt just as Piz came out of Wallace's room.

"Hey, Piz." he smirked. "I take it you let Candy vacate the premises unscathed?"

"He's not so bad. I apologized for belting him." Piz looked sheepish. "I don't know what came over me."

"Remorse?" Logan suggested as they started down the stairs.

"No," Piz laughed. "I meant when I hit him. I had no idea I could be so..."

"Enraged?"

"Jealous. I thought I was okay with all of it but when he smiled at Parker, I just..."

"You don't have to tell me."

"I don't, do I?" Piz looked thoughtfully at Logan. "I wanted to _aarrghh_...and all he did was cut her hair! When I think...I _had_ to apologize to him. How come you didn't _kill _me?"

Logan met Piz's in the eye, then smirked and said "I have remarkable restraint."

Piz did a whole body shudder as they walked into the kitchen.

* * *

There were pitchers of margaritas, coolers of beer, ice water carafes and plenty of sodas to wash down the potato salad, baked beans, corn on the cob, and fresh tomato slices as side dishes for the brats Logan was tending on the grill.

"What're we having?" Dick asked as he joined Logan and Wallace on the patio. "Huh. I was expecting steaks, at least."

"You can get a decent steak anywhere," Logan said. "We're having porn dogs."

"Yeah, baby!" Wallace agreed with Logan. "I haven't had a good brat since I left Chicago."

"A good brawt? Sounds like what I had in the garage earlier." Dick leered.

"In the garage?" Logan looked at him.

"You don't want to know." Dick assured him. "And your car's fine."

"What does this have to do with my car?" Logan put down his barbecue tongs and faced Dick.

"Nothing." Dick tried to look innocent. "It's one fine piece of Italian workmanship. Jeez."

"That is a great car." Wallace said, sensing the tension between the other two.

"You like it?" Logan asked Wallace, picking up his tongs. "The keys are hanging in the house. Take it for a spin before we eat."

"Damn!" Wallace grinned and almost tripped over his own feet running for the house.

"Dude." Dick said, glaring at Logan, who smirked innocently back at him. "You're the meanest mother fucker I've ever known."

Dick stalked back toward the kitchen door and almost collided with JR, who was bringing a tray of buns out to Logan.

"Excuse me, sir." JR said with a smile as he ducked around Dick, who did a double take. He followed JR back over to the grill, staring at him. After setting the buns down on the counter beside the grill, JR nodded to Dick and went back in the house.

"What the hell, dude?" Dick said to Logan. "I've heard of people stealing towels, bathrobes and the occasional end table but you're the first guy I ever heard of who stole the bell boy!"

"I didn't steal him; I hired him."

"Really? Crammin' him in a suitcase when you left town didn't occur to you?"

"Don't be silly, Dick." Logan said, logically."Who would have carried the suitcase?"

* * *

Hours later, the brats had been eaten, the sun had set and they had danced beneath the twinkle lights in the yard. Long after midnight, Bryn and Fin had gone home, JR had delivered the party back to the hotel and everyone had retired, exhausted. Logan had scooped Veronica up his arms and carried her to bed.

Moonlight filtered in through the bedroom windows and Veronica snuggled close to Logan.

"This was a fun day," she said.

"I wish I'd seen the fight."

"Pssh. You know the slap fest between Hugh Grant and Colin Firth at the end of Bridget Jones' Diary?"

"Yeah?"

"This fight made that one look like Rocky III." she giggled.

"Still...it was historic."

"It would have offended all your manly sensibilities." she sighed. "But thanks for everything, anyway."

"My pleasure. I'm having as much fun as you are, having them all here."

"No, I know." she murmured, drifting off. "I meant...thanks for bringing me daisies, every day."

to be continued...


	21. Chapter 21 Laughing Water

Chapter 21 Laughing Water

Sunday morning was as bright and sunny as anyone could have wished for. The humidity had broken during the night and all the windows in the house were open, drawing a delicious breeze inside from the lake. JR had eggs, sausages, bacon, fresh fruit, toast, muffins, two kinds of juice and vats of coffee available on the center island. Veronica, Mac, Wallace and Parker had helped themselves and were seated around the dining room table.

Wallace was immersed in the sports page while Parker perused the home decorating section of the newspaper. Mac had her nose buried in her laptop. Veronica's laptop was also open but she had set it aside and was busy working the Sunday crossword puzzle.

"Would you call this place contemporary or modern traditional?" Parker asked, looking around at the glass walls and hard wood floors.

"Ooh! 'Con-temp-orary' fits!" Veronica stopped chewing on the end of her pen and began filling in squares.

"No, I meant the house." Parker said, sipping her coffee.

"Um…" Veronica looked up but was distracted by the sound of Logan coming down the stairs. She smiled as he came around the corner, clad only in his cut off sweats, his hair sticking up in all directions, making her heart pound and her mouth water.

"Good morning, Sunshine!" she greeted him. Wallace and Parker looked up to see their half naked host stop dead in his tracks.

Logan scrubbed his hands over his face and stared blearily at the party sitting around his dining room table.

"Oh God." He mumbled. "They're still here."

"And…there he goes." Veronica said, as he turned on his heel and disappeared back the way he came.

Wallace chuckled and Parker went back to her newspaper. Mac hadn't even looked up from her screen. They were all much too accustomed to Logan's occasional intolerance for the presence of others. Years ago, Wallace had even given it a name.

_FLASHBACK_

_Wallace and Veronica were sitting in the quad, eating lunch together before going off to their separate afternoon classes._

"_Did Logan make it to the gym this morning?" Veronica asked. Wallace' s coach insisted on his players hitting the weight room all year round and Wallace took Logan's suggestion to get credit for it by taking weight training as an elective. This semester, Wallace and Logan happened to be in the same early morning class. It was one of the few classes Logan rarely skipped._

"_Yeah, he was there. Why?" Wallace's attention was split by the appearance of a group of cute girls._

"_Oh, he's been sort of…" Veronica shrugged. "You know."_

"_I do." Wallace looked at his best friend. "It's kinda funny; I used to think of him as the pack leader of the party hounds but he's not really, is he?"_

_"To the rest of us, it's hard to tell the difference between leading the pack and being chased by it."_

_"Sons-a-bitchin' Bumpuses." Wallace frowned. "I think if he had his druthers, he'd have the whole pack put down."_

"_Sometimes." Veronica agreed. She hadn't noticed the developing friendship between her two favorite young men until Wallace had flat out told her to open her eyes but she was glad it had happened and she always enjoyed hearing Wallace's take on Logan. "He doesn't really dislike the entire human race, you know. It just looks that way."_

"_With people, what you see is almost never what you get." Wallace said. "But Logan? That guy is an optical illusion."_

"_Yeah…he wasn't always the surly prince of darkness you've come to know and love."_

"_But I suppose you were born in combat boots, right?" Wallace hadn't lived in Neptune when Lilly died but he was well aware of the event that changed everything._

_Veronica tipped her head, acknowledging Wallace's point then said, "I remember… when we were kids, he was outgoing; the class clown. He was happy. I don't know if he thought his life was normal or if he was really overjoyed at having survived another day. Another day, another stay of execution."_

"_How bad was it?" Wallace asked. Like the rest of the world, Wallace had only found out about the uglier details of growing up with Aaron Echolls from Logan's reluctant appearance on Larry King._

"'_Cigarettes burns and broken noses'." Veronica quoted Trina and shook her head. "I don't know. He never talks about it. I think back now and there were so many times when he wouldn't take off his shirt at the pool, or his mom would just take him out of town with no warning…He was always with Duncan and Lilly. I thought nothing of it; I was always with Duncan and Lilly. I wasn't avoiding going home so it never occurred to me that he was hiding from his Dad. Although…"_

"_What?"_

"_Duncan knew." Veronica looked at Wallace, her face a stony mask of disgust and anger that Wallace was all too familiar with. "What kind of person just ignores it when he knows his best friend is being beaten to a pulp on a regular basis?"_

"_To a pulp? Really?"_

"_I don't know! Maybe I'm letting my imagination make it worse than it was but I saw what that man was capable of. And Duncan never said a word."_

"_I gotta admit, Superfly; I was never real impressed with Duncan Kane. I know you liked him but to me he always came across as the kind of guy who hides behind a smile to avoid ever having to take a stand." _

_"He was different before too, you know. Or maybe he wasn't…I was fifteen, what did I know? I thought there was more to him than a pleasant facade. I told myself he was helping me be a better person but the truth is...I felt guilty for being so bored! When he stood up for his daughter, that was when he finally became the guy I thought he was all along and of course by then…I was proud of him but I was over him, too." Veronica sighed. She cut her eyes at her best friend. "So, you never liked Duncan, huh?"_

"_I never disliked him." Wallace protested. "There was nothing there to dislike. I forgot the guy was even in the room while we were watching P&P."_

"_You forgot the rest of the world existed when you were with Jackie." Veronica teased._

"_Now Jackie! That girl had personality. She might have been a phony but she was a lot more fun than Duncan! Can't even imagine him standing up to Weevil or beating the shit out of anyone, much less a Russian mobster."_

"_He had all the virtues you dislike and none of the vices you admire…And you told me to cut Logan some slack."_

"_I didn't always like Logan but at least there was something there to dislike. No one ever forgot that he was in the room."_

"_Or the building. Or the world." Veronica added, dryly._

"_No, that was pretty much just you, V." Wallace grinned._

"_Oh, okay." Veronica acknowledged that truth with a shrug. "He was always the center of attention…making sure we only saw what he wanted us to see. "_

"_Misdirection. It's how he learned to deal with it."_

"_He gave us plenty to look at so no one would look too closely at him."_

"_That, and staying as far from home for as long as possible." Wallace nodded, as though that made sense. "But he's lived alone since senior year."_

"_He lives in a hotel; that's not really alone."_

"_No. It's perfect. He still doesn't have to do a thing for himself but he's…"_

"_Safe." Veronica said. "For the first time in his life, he feels safe at home."_

"_Can you imagine that?" Wallace said, thinking of the homes provided by his mom and Veronica's dad. "No wonder solitude appeals to him."_

"_Yeah. But every once in a while he likes to get out into the world and have some fun."_

"_It's not always fun out in the world…I don't suppose he told you about the d-bag in the gym who tried to pick a fight with him the first week of class, did he?"_

"_No." Veronica grimaced. "What happened?"_

"_Same old, same old. Idiot tried to get in Logan's face, calling Aaron every name in the book and a few from a book I never even read. Logan just stood there, looking bored until the guy ran outta breath. Then he stared at Logan and said 'what are you gonna do about it?' and Logan," Wallace chuffed a laugh, shaking his head remembering, "You know how he is, he just says, 'Oh, you're finished? I quit listening when I realized you weren't talking about me'."_

"_Wow." Veronica let out a deep breath. "Thank God the idiot didn't say anything about his Mom; there would have been bloodshed, for sure. It's gotten so much worse since high school."_

"_It was pretty bad in high school." Wallace reminded her. "He got in fights every other day during that whole Aaron Echolls Serial Cheater thing."_

"_But he wasn't alone. There were lots of kids with famous parents; Yolanda Hamilton, Duncan Kane. Jackie. Gia Goodman. Dick and Be...They all had scandals attached to them. It was just part of the water we swam in."_

"_You're right. I never thought about it while we were there but damn! We didn't do too badly, considering how out of place we were in the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous."_

"_Speak for yourself, Fennel!" Veronica laughed. "I lived in daily fear of being run out of town on a rail!"_

"_They'd have had to go through me to do it!" He said. "And Logan too, for that matter."_

"_We were surrounded by the uber privileged but he's the only one who had to put up with tour buses and paparazzi outside his gate every day. When we were young…it's not that he ever liked it but back then, at least there was a part of him that was still proud of who his parents were. Then those tabloid stories hit. We're all embarrassed by our parents once in a while but, man! Overnight, the whole world found out that his glamorous family was a dysfunctional mess."_

"_And that was only a precursor to the real shit storm." Wallace shook his head. "That episode of the Tinsel Town Diaries ran twice a day while Aaron was in jail."_

_"Turns out, being known as the son of a homicidal maniac is even more fun that living in the shadow of an Oscar winning narcissist."_

_"He did earn some notoriety all by himself. 'Accused murderer' and 'Oscar nominee' are titles that never go away. No wonder he sometimes suffers from Garbo Syndrome."_

"_He suffers from _what_?"_

"_Sometimes he just wants to be alone." Wallace shrugged. _

"_That class on the History of Cinema had a profound effect on you, didn't it?"_

_Wallace laughed and jumped up, saying "I'm gonna be late for class." He slung his back pack over his shoulder but before he left, he leaned toward Veronica and whispered "Rosebud." _

_END FLASHBACK_

"He's never been much of a morning person…" Veronica said, turning her attention back to the crossword puzzle. "Oh! 'Re-clu-sivity' fits. Yay."

"Do you always do your crosswords in pen?" Parker asked.

"Don't be impressed." Veronica said, picking up another piece of bacon and chomping on it. "Everyone does crosswords in pen."

"Well…I'm gonna go for a run." Parker looked at Mac. "Want to join me?"

Mac snorted but didn't look up from her laptop. Parker had been inviting her to come on her morning runs for four years and Mac had stopped dignifying her with an answer forty seven and a half months ago.

Just then, JR checked his vibrating phone and read the text. He came around the island and held the phone so Veronica could read it. "_Send V up to help me find…" _She groaned.

"Be right back," she said, hopping to her feet. "He probably lost his toothbrush again…"

She ran up the stairs toward the master bedroom.

"What exactly can't you find without my help?" she called out as she reached the top of the stairs, then squeaked in surprise as Logan caught her up in his arms the moment she entered their bedroom.

"Your G-spot," he murmured, sliding his mouth down her neck.

"Aw, you know exactly where that is!" she chortled as he kicked the door shut and spun her towards the bed.

Downstairs, Parker and Wallace looked up when they heard the door slam.

"We won't be seeing either of them again anytime soon." Mac said, never lifting her eyes from her screen.

* * *

An hour later, the rest of the party had arrived at the house and Logan and Veronica had come back downstairs. Heather, Mel, Dick and Logan were finishing their breakfasts and rifling through the newspaper. Piz and Wallace were out back playing one on one. Mac and Veronica were in the living room where Mac had noticed the paintings that Logan had brought back from Chicago.

"These are beautiful!" Mac said, after hearing the story of how they survived the fire that destroyed the house Logan grew up in.

"Yep. They're neither important nor fashionable but I remember what passed for important all over the walls of Echolls' house and frankly, I'd rather not look at it every day."

"So 'important' is art code for 'ugly'?" Mac giggled.

"It is now!" Veronica laughed. "And the more important a piece, the more patrons are willing to spend, so I guess 'patrons' is art code for 'marks'!"

"If Gradeyourass keeps making money, someday I'll be able afford important art." Mac sighed.

"You'd buy important art?" Veronica cocked her head and looked at her friend, puzzled.

"No, but if I could afford important works, I could certainly afford something I _like." _Mac explained. "Maybe find some young up and comer and be his patron. Matron?"

"Is 'matron' now art code for 'Sugar Mamma'?"

Wallace and Piz came in from the back, arguing.

"I'm telling you; that's 236-3." Wallace insisted. "And you only won those three because you made me play when I'd sprained my ankle and couldn't put any weight on it, which shouldn't count at all."

"I've won more than three games in four years!" Piz said, adamantly.

"Maybe in your dreams but not in real life."

"Well, I almost won more than three."

"Fine. We'll count every game where you scored more than four points a moral victory. That puts the tally at 230-9."

"You do realize that Hearst paid his tuition for the privilege of having him on the basketball team, don't you?" Veronica asked Piz. "Why do you keep challenging him?"

"The law of averages says once in a while I should win." Piz explained.

"The laws of physics says you won't" Wallace retorted. "Not to mention the rules of basketball."

"Perhaps someday, when you're both old and Wallace has had both knees replaced, you'll score more than four points." Mac said, encouragingly.

"He'd better catch me right before I get my knees replaced if he wants to actually beat me." Wallace told her. "He sucks."

"Can I help it if all those years you spent developing your jump shot I was learning to play guitar? Now that your playing days are over, I think we'll come to agree that my skill comes in handy more often than yours."

"I could learn to play the guitar." Wallace said. "You will always suck at hoops."

"Nobody is impressed with the quality of your layups sitting around a campfire on the beach!"

"What up, losers?" Dick announced, coming into the room. "All anyone cares about on the beach is the quality of the beer. Did I say 'quality'? I meant 'quantity'."

"You like it when I play!" Piz reminded him.

"Course, I do! Even bad guitar makes Mel all soft and cuddly. There were a few times when I thought I'd have to name my firstborn Piz just to give you your props. But then I realized; the better the beer, the better you sound. Mel drinks Stella and that's a real name." Dick shrugged. "If there wasn't any beer and you started to play, I'm pretty sure I'd be all 'shut up and go get some beer!'"

"Have you noticed how every conversation deteriorates when Dick enters a room?" Mac asked Veronica.

"Not to mention the air quality." Veronica added.

"Thanks Ronnie," Dick punched her playfully on the arm. "I love you too."

* * *

Logan looked up from the newspaper when Parker came back from her run, flushed and sweaty.

"Sorry I took so long," she grinned, pouring herself a large glass of water. "I got lost. I just kept following the path from one lake to another...I recognized all of them and I knew I wasn't far from here but when I'd gone around the big lake, I couldn't remember exactly how to get back here from where ever I was."

"So how did you find your way back?" Veronica asked, looking up from the game of backgammon she and Mac were playing.

"Well, I stopped in that big brownstone off the beach-you know; the one with the restaurant on the ground floor? I was looking for a phone and I met the cutest guy!"

"Of course you did." Mac nodded.

"Seriously!" Parker turned to her, excitedly, "He was so nice! I told him I was lost and he asked me where I was going and he knew just where I had to go. He even walked me to a door and pointed out the way, which as soon as I saw it, I remembered was how we got home from the beach yesterday. It's true what they say about Minnesotans; they are so nice. And cute! I'm telling you, he looked just like Josh Hartnett!"

"You were in the Calhoun Beach Club?" Logan asked. "Place on the ground floor called The View?"

"Yes! That's the name." Parker nodded.

"Ah." Logan turned his attention back to the paper.

"Ah? _Ah?_ What does 'Ah' mean?" Parker demanded, suspiciously.

"Nothing." Logan said. "This is Minnesota. Everyone looks like Josh Hartnett."

"Go shower up," Veronica told her. "We're going to the falls!"

* * *

In the early afternoon heat, Veronica and Wallace trailed the others in the shade of the woods that bordered the lower, last mile of the Minnehaha creek. On their arrival at the falls, JR dropped them all off near the ancient park house which now held rest rooms, a large open air dining area and the Sea Salt restaurant. The group ignored the building and the racks of rental bikes, gocarts and pedicabs parked on the cobbled street but went straight for the stone walls above the falls to take a look at one of Minnesota's most historic sights. Thanks to the frequent evening thunderstorms, the creek was running high and the falls were a thick, white cataract as thousands of gallons of water a minute boiled over the fifty three foot drop. As they looked over the wall they could see that the spray caused the air below them to sparkle and the breeze lifted a cool, light mist up over the wall, which was more than welcome in the August heat.

"It's...hypnotic." Parker finally said, after the group had been standing and staring down at the grotto below for a few minutes.

"Yeah...has anyone ever survived going over?" Piz asked.

"I don't know." Veronica leaned far out over the wall. "It's pretty shallow and rocky down there."

"It doesn't seem that high." Mel said. "I bet if you were fat enough, you'd survive."

"If you were _fat_ enough?" Logan asked.

"Yeah. You know..." Mel shrugged. "Bumbles bounce?"

"You're so stupid, Mel!" Heather laughed.

"It's high enough." Dick said, dropping a protective arm each around his wife and sister in law. "Jesus."

"Let's go down." Logan said.

"How?" Heather asked. Veronica pointed out the stone stairways on either side of the bridge spanning the creek at the top of the falls and naturally the group split up to race each other to the sister bridge which spanned the creek just past the pool at the bottom. From there, a rustic path lead east through the deep, wooded ravine. Limestone cliffs rose on either side of the creek, which ran swift and deep through the narrow channel beyond the pool into which the falls poured. About a quarter mile further into the woods, another bridge crossed the creek, which slowed and widened considerably. A large grassy park opened up next to the water, into which stones had been set to capture the water out of the current and create a large, shallow wading pool. There were already a few kids playing and swimming in the water.

Dick and Logan charged straight into the water and in a flash, Wallace and Piz were splashing around in it too. Heather took off her sandals and waded but the older girls were content to laugh at the guys, keep their shoes on and stay dry.

It was such a gorgeous day and the shade under the trees was so cool and refreshing that even Mac was enthusiastic about following the path through the woods to see where it went.

Veronica and Wallace soon fell behind the others.

"You guys got a good thing here, Veronica." Wallace said, looking up at the stone cliffs rising along side them.

"Yeah. We hit the jackpot." She said. "The job would've been the same anywhere I was assigned but there's enough here to keep Logan busy, too."

"You mean out of trouble?" Wallace laughed.

"I always mean out of trouble." She laughed, too.

"I gotta say Superfly, In all the years I've known you, I don't think I've ever see you so..."

"What? Happy?"

"Relaxed!" Wallace laughed again. "In two and a half days, I haven't seen you freak out over anything, try to solve anything or take on anyone else's problems. I think that's a record."

"I know. Turns out there's an upside to being a worker bee. It's an adjustment, learning to do as I'm told. But they don't pay me enough to worry and I can actually take the weekends off. After all this time, I finally got what I've wanted for years; a normal life."

"Normal? Veronica, you wouldn't know what to do with a normal life if someone gift wrapped it and gave it to you for Christmas."

"Whatchu talkin' 'bout, Wallace?" she demanded. "What could be more normal than a girl celebrating her twenty third birthday with her friends? Walking through the park like this doesn't cost a thing!"

"Riiight." Wallace just grinned, choosing not to point out that a rented limo had brought them to the park and that the only reason she was able to spend the weekend with her friends was because her husband had sent his private jet across the country to collect them all.

"Things are great!" Veronica went on. "I'm still getting to know the ropes at work. Just a lot of routine checks so far but I'm good at it. You know, the kind of stuff I've been doing for years. Logan's having a lot of fun and JR is here to keep him out of trouble. I love my new house and my new city and our new life!"

"That does sound like a pretty normal life," Wallace conceded. "But I know you. Both of you. You can't help looking for trouble and Logan can't help finding it."

"That was then, Wallace. We're grown up now. I mean, sure; shit happens. I know that. But at least Logan and I have a chance here to make it all our own crap instead of having to deal with all the crap that happened to us before. All that crap that wasn't our fault."

"That's true. You've wanted to get out of Neptune since the day I met you."

"I know. I used to think that if I could get out of Neptune, I'd leave some of the baggage and pain behind but it doesn't work that way, does it? All those things that happened; they're part of us now and no matter where we go, they always will be. But we don't have to let it define us."

"Listen to you, all grown up and wise." Wallace reached out and gave her a shove.

"Yeah," she grinned. "Well, you know? When I tally it all up, I think in the end, I got more out of Neptune than it took from me."

"Neptune made all of us who we are." Wallace nodded. "And I think we turned out pretty cool. I mean, _I_ always was but even Dick is tolerable now."

"Poor Dick." Veronica said the words she couldn't have imagined herself saying four years ago. "Neptune kicked the shit out of him, too."

"It's funny; if Madame Sophy had told me back in high school that someday Dick Casablancas would be one of my best friends, I'd have told her she was nuts."

"It's frikkin' hilarious."

* * *

The path beside the creek continued through the woods until the group found themselves standing on the banks of the Mississippi river. The bluffs across the water were high and thickly wooded. About a half mile upstream the Ford Parkway crossed the river into St. Paul. The sky above them was clear and blue and a slight breeze riffled the water. The cliffs on the north side of the creek seem to have vanished by the time they reached the river. A steep sandy bank covered in driftwood and boulders lead down to the water. Where the creek met the river, one last foot bridge made it easy to cross the mouth of the creek. A few men were fishing further down the bank of the river. When Wallace and Veronica reached the end of the path, Logan and Heather were leaning on the rail in the middle of the bridge, watching a barge come up the river. Parker and Piz were climbing among the driftwood on the banks and Mac was seated on the huge stump of a cottonwood, beneath the canopy of several more of the giant trees, looking serene and meditative. Dick and Mel were nowhere in sight.

Veronica stopped beside Mac and took a photo of Logan and Heather on the bridge.

"Check it out." Mac pointed toward some huge trees leaning out over the water a few hundred yards down stream. "Eagles."

"Whoa." Veronica breathed, spotting two or three huge birds in the tree tops. As they watched, a huge raptor swooped over the water in a lazy arc, suddenly diving to the surface and coming up with something in it's talons. She lifted her camera and took some shots.

Wallace went down to the bridge and stood with Logan and Heather. They watched as the bald eagles caught their lunch.

"Logan! Wallace! Come see what me and Mel found." Dick called from the woods on the far side of the creek. The others followed his lead and there, just back a bit from the creek, was a shallow cave in the limestone cliff that looked as though it had been carved out over the years by hundreds of individuals, carving their names, initials, dates and other designs into the soft stone wall. In addition to standard graffiti, there were several intricate things carved into the cliff wall; skull faces, birds and a Minnesota Vikings logo.

"Well, that's just awesome." Veronica said, nodding. "If we manage to wipe ourselves off the planet and aliens ever land here, all they need to know about our civilization is right there, carved into the cliff, waiting for them to decifer it."

"Yep..." Mel said, busily carving on the wall herself. "Done! What do you think?" she stood up and there, freshly carved into the wall was a lopsided heart with D plus M inside.

"Babe!" Dick said, opening his arms. Mel jumped into them and Veronica looked at Logan as they kissed.

"You want me to deface the rock wall for you?" Logan asked. "'Cause I'll knock that whole sucker down if you want."

"That's okay," she assured him. "I don't need minor acts of vandalism to prove your love for me."

"Just bears won through various demonstrations of ring tossing ability?"

"Yes. Definitely those. Maybe a tattoo in a strategic spot?"

"Eh," he grimaced. "You know how I feel about needles."

"I was kidding." She kissed his nose. "There's not a square inch of your skin that should be covered by ink."

"Someday, this whole thing is going to cave in." Mac announced, most unromantically. She had seen everyone disappear into the woods from her perch on the tree stump and curiousity had brought her over the bridge.

"Whoa." Dick stepped out of the cave, drawing Mel with him. "It is?"

"Inevitably." Mac looked up at the cliff. "I'm not saying it'll happen this year but if people keep whittling away at it, it's gonna happen."

"So...no aliens will be able to learn about the glories of...human skulls and NFL teams from the carvings here?" Veronica asked.

"Not unless we manage to wipe out civilization in the next couple of decades."

"So there's still hope?" Logan said.

"Of course." Mac nodded optimistically.

* * *

Later on, they were all down on the river bank, watching the eagles and the boats, enjoying the sun and the breeze.

"Dick and I aren't on marriage probation anymore." Mel told Parker. "We're carved in stone now."

"Really? That's good." Parker said, pumping her fist in solidarity. "We've been rooting for you."

"I guess that leaves it to us to uphold tradition, doesn't it?" Piz said, coming up from the water's edge, where he, Logan, Heather, and Dick were throwing rocks.

"What do you mean?" Parker asked. She and Mel were laying back on their elbows in the shade beneath the cottonwoods atop the beach. Veronica and Mac were lying on their stomachs, chins in hand, playing tic tac toe in the sand and watching the others try to skip stones.

"Well, Dick and Mel eloped to Vegas, Veronica and Logan got married at the court house so if anyone's gonna do the whole church wedding thing, it'll have to be us."

"_What?" _Parker sat up straight and Veronica, Mac and Mel all stared at her, eyes and mouths wide open.

"Well, I guess it doesn't have to be in a church but I figured..." as Piz spoke, three heads swivelled in his direction.

"Are...are you asking me to _marry_ you?" Parker cut him off, her voice an octave higher than usual. The other three girls heads snapped from Parker to Piz, like cats watching a ping pong match.

"Uh...no. You need me to _ask?" _

_"WHAT?" _Now Parker's voice was an octave and a half higher than normal.

"I mean...I just figured...you know; once I got on my feet, maybe had a more stable schedule and could afford an apartment with an actual bedroom that we'd...well, you know."

"You 'just figured'? You took it for granted that someday, when you were good and ready, that I'd still be waiting around to marry you?" Parker stood up as she spoke, planting her fists firmly on her hips.

"Well..." Piz's eyes cut briefly from Parker to the three girls, agog on the sand and he chuffed a laugh but unconsciously squared his shoulders and valiantly forged on with a conversation that had rapidly gotten way over his head. "...yeah. Of course!"

Three sets of wide eyes turned to see Parker slowly lower her fists from her hips, a smile spreading across her face. "Oh, _Stosh!" _she breathed, her voice well within it's normal range as she threw her arms around him.

"Thank God." Veronica whispered, letting her head drop forward into the sand. "My neck was getting sore."

"Jeez." Wallace, who had pretended to be asleep through the exchange muttered. "I didn't think my boy was gonna be able to get himself out of that one unscathed."

"He didn't." Mac pointed out.

"He did okay." Mel said, watching the engaged couple make out. "Hey, you guys!" she called to the others. "P&P just got engaged!"

"Really?" Dick wandered up from the water, frowing at the two who were now grinning happily. "You guys aren't already married?"

"You remember them getting married?" Logan asked, coming up the beach behind him.

"No but I pretty much only remember stuff that happens to me." Dick shrugged. "Although, I forget a lot of that, too."

"You are such an idiot." Piz shook his head but the grin on his face didn't falter.

"I'm just messing with you!" Dick grabbed Piz, putting him in a head lock and giving him a noogie. "Congratulations, it's about time!"

"Hey!" Parker objected to having Piz so rudely yanked out of her arms. "Be careful with that, it's mine now!"

"You be careful!" Dick pointed a finger on the hand that wasn't still wrapped around Piz's neck at her. "This guy means alot to me; he's like the little brother I never had."

"OW." Piz struggled as Dick continued to vigorously knuckle his scalp.

"You did have a little brother." Heather said, frowning.

"He's nothing like the brother I had." Dick explained.

"Thank God." Veronica, Mac and Logan said, simultaneously.

"I'm older than you are!" Piz growled, squirming free as Dick relaxed his head lock.

"But you're so innocent and shit." Dick shrugged. "Makes you seem years younger."

"Dick is old in sin." Logan smirked.

"You're one to talk, Grampa." Dick returned.

"If they have the church wedding," Mac asked, "Does that mean I'm stuck being a spinster, shacking up with one guy after another till I'm too old to care anymore?"

"You could be like Goldie Hawn or Susan Sarandon," Mel suggested.

"Ancient yet still beautiful?" Mac frowned.

"Same guy for decades. Kids even but never tied the knot." Mel explained. "Plus, they're both like, a hundred and still hot, so yeah."

"Or maybe you'll have a big, fat, Greek wedding!" Veronica chortled.

"Doubtful." Mac glared at her. "Have you met Leo's Mom?"

"Oh my gosh, I can't _wait_ to tell my parents!" Parker said, viciously. "My mom was so sure he was gonna move on and forget all about me."

"Uuugh, your parents." Piz dropped into the sand beside Wallace. "They hate me."

"You? They hate _you_?" Veronica asked, amazed. "How?"

"How is that even possible?" Logan asked. "I couldn't do it and believe me; I tried."

"Oh, you remember my parents." Parker closed her eyes in an expression of long suffering.

"Yeah, but it made perfect sense that they hated me," Logan said. "Parents always hated me."

"Only one of your girls was sent away to boarding school..." Veronica tilted her head. "I think it's _husbands _you should have been worried about."

"See? And she loves me!" Logan pointed at his detail oriented wife. "I'm a reprobate but Piz is Mr. Upstanding Citizen."

"You're not a reprobate; you're an Indolent Capitalist Swine." Parker corrected him. "Piz is a Neocon Extremist."

"You are?" Every eye on the beach turned to Piz.

"I must be." He rolled his eyes and threw up his hands. "I want a job in radio, don't I? Her parents are granola nazis."

"Ugh." Mel said, sticking out her tongue. "The worst."

"But crunchy and delicious." Dick pointed out. "Although completely worthless without the m&ms."

"I'm so glad you're an orphan." Veronica said, reaching for Logan's hand. He laughed and pulled her into his arms.

"Well, my parents have been married for almost thirty years," Mac said "And they're still hot for each other. It's embarrassing."

"No it's not. It's great." Heather said. "I wish mine were."

"You're right." Mac nodded with a smile. "It is great."

"My folks have been together for twenty five years." Piz said. "I don't know how hot they are but they still enjoy each other's company."

"Mine are bound together by their common sense of superiority and contempt for the rest of the human race." Parker said.

"Ours hate each other's guts." Mel said.

"Mine get along great! They haven't spoken or laid eyes on each other since I was ten." Dick said. "It's worked out pretty well for me."

"My Dad died over ten years ago. I still miss him." Wallace shrugged. "If my Mom finds another guy like that, I hope she marries him this time."

"My Dad is great but my Mom is an alcoholic who broke his heart." Veronica said, leaning back against Logan's chest. "I don't know if I'll ever see her again. Don't even know if I care anymore."

"My Mom was an alcoholic exhibitionist and my Dad was a homicidal maniac." Logan said, resting his chin on the top of Veronica's head. "I miss my housekeeper."

Wallace started to giggle. "I can't help it," he said. "Every time we're all on a beach I can't help but remember that first time..."

"When Logan and Weevil..?" Veronica cocked her head.

"No; you, me, Mac and Piz ran into our two surfers here, just before...?"

"Ah yes. I tried to pick a fight." Logan said, nostalgically. "For once, I was unsuccessful."

"Be more specific, dude." Dick said. "I spent alot of time on that beach with you."

"It was right before finals." Piz said. "He tried to pick a fight with me."

"He beat the hell out of you, didn't he?" Dick recalled. Piz nodded and hugged Parker, who affectionately patted his once black and blue face.

"That's when you tried to kiss me!" Mac glared at Dick, still outraged by the memory.

"I did not." Dick said, indignantly. "Oh, wait. I did." he burst out laughing at the memory.

"WHY?" Mel asked.

"What do you mean?" Dick still laughed. "Why shouldn't I try to kiss her? Look at her!"

"We were already married!" Mel shoved him.

"Yeah, but not _married_ married, just...Vegas married." Dick shrugged. "It's not like we were carved in stone or anything. We were...um...on a break."

"Oh. Well, don't try to kiss her anymore." Mel ordered.

"This is great." Piz said, looking around the beach. "You know what would make this even better?"

"Beer?" Mel suggested.

"A blanket." Mac opined.

"Ice cream!" Heather said.

"Some of those porn dogs from last night." Dick said.

"About seven fewer people?" Logan said, still holding Veronica.

"Definitely a blanket then," she said, looking up at him. "Cause you know; sand gets everywhere."

"How about a boat?" Wallace put in.

"NO!" Piz said, rolling his eyes in exasperation. _"My guitar!"_

"I'd settle for an umbrella." Veronica said, noticing the sky behind them.

"What?" everyone looked at her just as the sound of thunder rolled down the creek toward them. They had all been facing the river to the East where the sky was clear and blue and hadn't noticed the clouds moving in from the West. Almost immediately, large drops of rain began to fall. They all moved back under the trees towards the path back to the falls and the park up above.

* * *

An hour later they were all back at the house. They had gotten caught in the down pour before they made it back to the limo, waiting at the top of the long flight of stone steps. Mac had protested that she didn't have the strength to run up the long twisting flight after a half mile dash through the woods. Dick and Logan had hoisted her between them and carried her all the way up.

"Dammit, Mackie; good thing you're so little or I'd have chucked you over the wall about half way up," Dick gasped, collapsing in the back seat.

"You don't look very big but you weigh about four hundred pounds." Logan said. "What are you made out of? Lead?"

"That was really scary!" Mac laughed. "I was sure you were gonna drop me and I'd go bouncing all the way back to the bottom."

"Me too." Dick groaned. "And I'd have missed you 'cause no way were we going back for you."

"I would have sent JR for you." Logan assured her.

"You are so sweet!" Mac patted Logan's face.

"I need you to run Gradeyourass." He shrugged. She punched him.

Having checked out of the hotel that morning, they all had dry clothes to change into when they got back to the house. JR and Bryn were in the kitchen, preparing a lunch of all the leftovers from the night before.

Veronica was in the sunroom scanning the Western sky. Heather came into the room carrying a couple of board games.

"Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit?" she asked.

"Monopoly." Wallace said, coming in. "Have you ever played Trivial Pursuit with Veronica?"

"Have you ever played Monopoly with Logan?" Heather countered, raising an eyebrow. "He makes you use real money."

"Maybe we should watch a movie." Veronica turned from her study of the sky. "Let's check the weather to see how long this is going to last."

They went into the living room where Logan and Piz were playing Xbox basketball.

"Hey, you mind if we check the weather real quick?"

"Not at all." Logan grabbed the remote and changed the channel.

"I was winning!" Piz objected.

"Don't be such a baby." Wallace admonished him.

"Winning doesn't matter that much." Logan said, flipping through channels looking for the weather, "As long as you win."

"Well, I wouldn't know, would I?" Piz grumbled.

All the local channels were broadcasting the weather. The storm was like most of the other storms of the summer; intense but narrow. According to the dopplar radar charts, the sun would be out again long before it set.

"We can still go see Zed Leppelin at the band stand." Veronica assured Heather. "But we have time to watch a movie if you want."

"I want to watch something romantic!" Parker sighed. "These guys can blast each other to kingdom come up here."

"Hey!" Dick cried, as Logan played with the remote, trying to get back to the game he and Piz were playing. "Was that Trina?"

Everyone stopped in their tracks and looked at the TV as Logan returned to E!. Sure enough, there was his big sister, looking radiant and chatting about her latest project.

_"It's called 'How I Stole Your Identity' and it's going to be a smash!" _Trina's voice filled the room. _"The script for the pilot was the best I've read in years and the cast is brilliant! These are some of the most talented artists I've ever worked with. Every last one of them is the funniest person I've ever met. It's like working with a roomful of Ashton Kutchers!"_

"What's she doing?" Mac asked.

"I knew she signed with some new sitcom," Logan said. "I guess it got picked up."

* * *

"I can't believe there's enough here!" JR said, looking at the spread of food on the counter.

"Of course!" Bryn smiled. "Things you need to know about brats; simmer them in beer and always buy enough for lunch the next day. Stick with me, kid; I'll learn ya all you gotta know about being a Minnesotan."

"Excellent!"

"No, the proper reply is 'You betcha'."

"You betcha." He parroted, obediently.

"Good! Just wait till the weather turns. You're gonna love tater tot season."

"I can not wait. You want to go tell them lunch is ready?"

"You betcha." Bryn turned on her heel and headed toward the living room.

There, she found the entire party mesmerized by an interview with an actress who could more accurately be described as cute rather than beautiful. She looked familiar but Bryn had to read the crawl to see that her name was Trina Echolls.

_"The last few years haven't been the easiest in the world. I miss him every day. But a hit sitcom is the best way I can think of to put all that past tragedy behind me, you know?" Trina was saying._

"Nothing wrong with her that couldn't be cured with a huge dose of attention." Logan sneered, lifting the remote only to freeze at the next question.

_"And what about your brother? He had some not so flattering things to say about your father in his last interview a few years ago. How is your relationship with each other?"_

_"My baby bro is all grown up now." Trina's smile looked a little forced. "I'm overjoyed to be able to say that he recently got his degree and seems to have put the drunkeness, fights and womanizing behind him. He has settled down with a girl whom I have always adored..."_

"She couldn't be bothered to show up for the wedding, though." Mac said dryly.

"Didn't invite her." Logan said tersely.

Bryn frowned.

_"So you're back on speaking terms?" the interviewer pressed. _

_"We've always been on speaking terms." Trina insisted. "Don't believe everything you read in the trades. Especially about my brother! I could tell stories..! But this is MY interview, isn't it?"_

_"And I've really enjoyed talking with you. Trina Echolls, everyone..."_

_"If we can iron out the details," Trina interrupted the reporters attempt to wind the interview to a close, "You may see him in a cameo on 'How I Stole Your Identity'!"_

"Oh God." Logan groaned as eight lower jaws landed in their owners laps.

_"Really?" the reporter perked right up. "The producers are in talks?"_

_"Oh! Me and my big mouth!" Trina twittered, coyly. "I'm really not supposed to talk about plans for upcoming episodes!"_

_"You heard it here, first!" the reporter grinned excitedly at the camera. "An Echolls family reunion in the works on 'How I Stole Your Identity'! An E! Entertainment exclusive!"_

Dick took the remote from Logan's nerveless fingers and turned off the television.

"What a twat." he said, fiercely.

"Now I understand why Elvis shot the tv." Piz said. "You know, I got a call last week from some reporter who pretended he was interested in radio start ups but wasted no time asking about you."

"Someone called you and asked about _Logan_?" Mel asked, frowning. "That's weird."

"Not if Trina's show is getting buzz." Wallace pointed out.

"Or if they needed to generate some buzz." Veronica added, thoughtfully.

"I hope that stupid show bombs." Heather growled.

"If she's the star, chances are pretty good that it will." Veronica said, rubbing Logan's shoulders.

"No." Logan said, shaking his head. "I hope it's a hit. I hope it's the Seinfeld of the decade."

"That could just make things worse." Veronica frowned.

"Really? What's Jerry Seinfeld's brother's name?" Logan arched an eyebrow at her.

"Jerry Seinfeld has a brother?" Piz asked. Everyone in the room looked at him as he belatedly got Logan's point. "Oh."

"Lunch is ready!" Bryn blurted, successfully breaking the tension in the room.

"It's three thirty in the afternoon." Dick said. "Don't you mean 'linner' is ready?"

* * *

Late that night, Logan collapsed next to Veronica in bed.

"That was fun." she said. "Best birthday ever!"

After linner, they'd played a Monopoly/Trivial Pursuit hybrid, the rules of which were made up by Heather and Wallace, who served as the Board of Regulators. The rest of the field was divided into two corporations; whenever a token landed on a property, the representative corporation had to answer questions correctly to be allowed to buy said property. After all properties were sold, when a token landed on the property of a competing corporation, they had the choice of paying rent, or going toe to toe with the landlord, answering trivia questions with the 'blurt rule' in effect. If the corporation holding the lease blurted the correct answer first, the rent was doubled. This could go on as long as the renting corporation chose, each question double or nothing.

It was a free for all that ended with Logan and Dick grappling on the floor as their competing corporate share holders shrieked with laughter, when the sun came out and the Board of Regulators declared the entire economy bankrupt.

They all took the limo over to Lake Harriet and rocked out to Zed Leppelin and enormous ice cream cones at the concession stand.

Eventually, the concert ended, the sun set, mosquitos began coming out and it was time for the party to head to the airport where the jet was waiting to take everyone back West.

"You may have just started a birthday tradition," Veronica teased. "Cuz you're never gonna be able to top that."

"Damn. You're probably right." Logan turned towards her, propping his head on one hand. "Know what I want for my birthday?"

"Umm...I could fly Charlie in for a few days?"

"Nope. No visitors. No party. No cake. Just you and me, right here."

"How is that special?"

"I don't mean right here at home, I mean right here in bed. We don't leave this room from the time you get home on Friday until you have to leave for work on Monday. JR can leave our meals outside the door."

"So, there could be cake?" she said, hopefully.

"Yeah, I guess cake would be good. Strawberry short cake, especially."

"Strawberries aren't in season in November."

"JR can get 'em."

"That sounds...really good." Veronica sighed.

to be continued...


	22. Chapter 22 Snotty Little Prix

Chapter 22 Snotty Little Prix

The following week hit Veronica like the first days back at school after a break; on one hand it was painful and irritating to be plunged back into a world of schedules, paper work, professional obligations and Cap'n Blythe, Agent in Charge of Unnecessarily Nasty Treatment but on the other hand, there was something relaxing about getting back into the swing of routine.

_It's a groove, not a rut. It's a groove, not a rut..._She sighed, staring blindly at her computer screen. _Yeah, that's it. __If I repeat that often enough, will it become true?_

Veronica, Tuski and Morris had just spent a little over an hour in Blythe's cubby hole of an office, having it explained to them _again _that background checks were the meat and potatoes of investigations and that the work they were doing was necessary to national security.

"Maybe if we understood _why _we're investigating these people or what exactly, we're looking for; we could do our jobs more efficiently?" Veronica had suggested.

Blythe seemed to take Veronica's question as a personal affront.

"Look, Mars;" she said, rolling her eyes, "If we knew what we were looking for, we wouldn't need you to search for it, now would we?"

"But none of these people are applying for jobs with the government; none of them are trying to leave the country…" Veronica had pointed out but Blythe just cut her off.

"Don't tell me what they're _not_ doing, just find out what they _are_ doing!" she had snapped. "Get back to work."

The three young agents had gone back to their desks.

"Think you'll ever learn to just nod your head and say 'yes, ma'am'?" Morris asked Veronica.

"Your lips are moving but no sound is coming out." She answered, peering at him curiously.

"That's what you've gotta learn to do." Tuski said, dropping back into her chair. "Personally, I don't think Blythe knows what we're looking for. I think Larson just hands her a pile of crap and she dumps it on us, no questions asked."

"You're right." Morris said. "That's the secret to her successful career as a bureaucrat."

"I guess someone's gotta put the 'B' in FBI." Veronica muttered.

"Come on," Morris objected. "Calling her a bitch after what you've already dubbed her seems like overkill."

"I didn't call her a bitch. It's the Federal _Bureau_ of Investigation." Veronica pointed out.

"I kinda like 'Federal Bitch of Investigation'." Tuski said, thoughtully.

"That's a cool title." Veronica agreed.

"Maybe you'll earn it someday." Morris said, his voice encouraging.

"I hope so!" Veronica grinned.

"I'd rather be known as a bitch than a bureaucrat." Tuski said, turning back to her computer screen.

"But Cap'n Blythe is living proof that we can aspire to be _both_!" Veronica laughed.

"It's good to have goals." Morris nodded.

* * *

Visual aides had always helped Veronica keep the information she juggled in her head clear. There was no where to put a white board in the bullpen so she used a notebook to chart her progress. She pulled the book out and began making notes and looking for connections. The beginning of an investigation was always an exciting time for her; anything could matter; anything could be a clue; when nothing could be ruled out, everything was information you could sink your teeth into.

But she'd been chewing on these dossiers for weeks and nothing was making her mouth water.

She pulled a second folder off the pile on her desk and flipped it open.

Something caught her eye.

Frowning, she pulled two more folders off the pile and sifted through them.

"Holy tights, Batman…" she mumbled to herself. "I may be onto something."

* * *

Wally walked into Larson's office without knocking.

"What do you know?" Larson asked.

"My ass from my elbows?" Wally dropped into a chair in front of Larson's desk. "Up from down? J Lo from Beyonce? A dick from a duck? Fish from foul? A hit from a miss?"

"Get off it!"

"What?"

"No one can tell J Lo from Beyonce."

"Well, not from behind but I do enjoy trying."

"Did you come in here to waste time or do you have something for me?" Larson cut him off.

"Can't I do both?"

"Not on a Monday. Seriously, Wally. What did you find?"

"Nothing. You were right. OCB told me to go fuck myself. Didn't even offer to buy me dinner first."

"Huh." Larson was neither surprised not disappointed by Wally's report. He hadn't expected the agent to get anywhere with those snotty little pricks at OCB, who were convinced that their fellow law enforcement agents couldn't be trusted. It must be a real bitch for locals to have to work with those prima donas.

"So now what?" Wally asked. "You want to drop the Echolls angle?"

"No." Larson said, thoughtfully. "I got a guy at OCB I can call. Even if he won't talk to me about Sorokin, I don't see how it's a problem. You didn't find anything between him and Echolls but that one rumor that they crossed paths?"

"Nope. Logan Echolls may as well have been Born Again in 2007."

"Do you think he's smart enough to have kept that kind of connection hidden?"

"Hell no. If there were anything there, I'd have found it."

"Okay then."

"So…what do you have in mind?" Wally asked, curiously.

"Uh uh, Wally;" Larson grinned and shook his head. "Getting above your pay grade, now."

"Fuck you." Wally said mildly, as he stood and headed for the door. "And the horse you rode in on."

"You _are _the horse I rode in on, Wally!" Larson chortled as his old friend slammed the door.

* * *

Logan had spent the hot, windy morning on the lake and after lunch had been more than ready to hunker down in his office and get to work.

But first he had to make a few phone calls.

When Logan had gotten married, changed his name and moved out of Neptune, he had left no trail for Trina to follow. He hadn't expected her to try. They had never been close and after Aaron's acquittal, they'd barely spoken. It hadn't been animosity, even though Trina never bought Logan's version of events. It had simply been that they had nothing in common. Even their experiences growing up as the children of Aaron and Lynne Echolls had been different; Trina had been the spoiled favorite who could do no wrong and Logan had been the spoiled scapegoat who could do nothing right.

Logan didn't blame Trina for the way his parent's had treated him, he simply had nothing to say to her.

Until now.

Seeing Trina on E! had demonstrated the futility of trying to cut her out of his life. There was a better way to handle his sister.

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," Logan muttered to himself as he dialed the number he'd gotten from the accountant who had handled his inheritance until he'd come of age.

Avi Kaufman still handled the bulk of Trina's money for her. He had been pissed at Logan ever since the Young Fool had turned 21 and fired him. He laughed his ass off when he had heard the details of the prenuptial agreement. If the marriage failed, the wife got everything? The kid was either an idiot or arrogant beyond words. Probably both.

When he had seen Logan Echolls number appear on his personal cell, he had experienced a moment of soaring hope. Maybe the Young Fool had come to his senses. Maybe he was ready to let a professional handle that immense fortune again. Who the hell was Sam Horschack, anyway? By the time Avi answered the call, he was mentally calculating his commissions. That happy reverie lasted all of three seconds. All the Young Fool wanted was his sister's private number. Echolls didn't even bother to make up a story as to why he needed help contacting his own sister. Avi knew the Young Fool couldn't stand her. He didn't get it; he had always found Trina charming if a little stupid and a lot pretentious. As though the Young Fool's faults weren't far more egregious. He knew Trina had tried to track down her brother, although why she would want to stay in touch with the snotty little prick was beyond Avi's imagination. He was pretty sure the kid was guilty of everything he'd ever been accused of, although Avi couldn't get really worked up over a couple of dead Mexicans.

If it made Trina happy to hear from her ass hole of a little brother, Avi had no problem helping make it happen. He gave Logan the number.

Logan was oblivious to all that went through Avi's head when he called. He got Trina's number and promptly forgot Avi's existence. Again.

He programmed Trina's number into his phone, then picked up the disposable unit JR had bought for him that morning. He didn't expect her to answer an unknown number so he wasn't disappointed to get her voice mail.

"Hey, Trina. Logan. Saw you last night on E! You look great. Give me a call. You've got the number."

He worked for several hours before the disposable phone chirped.

"Hyena." He answered with the nickname calculated to piss her off.

"Yogi Bear!" she laughed, answering with the name that had most infuriated him when he was little. "I've been trying to get ahold of you forever! Has Veronica got you locked up in a cage somewhere? Not that anyone could blame her; she's the only one on earth who ever could get you to behave."

"Veronica doesn't try to make me behave; it's why we get along so well."

"You _should_ behave for her; she's adorable."

"You don't need to sell me on the adorability of Veronica."

"No, of course not. How's married life?"

"It's good. It's _quiet_. I'd like to keep it that way."

"Oh good for you! You sound so grown up, it breaks my heart." Trina said, melodramatically. "Say, I'm really glad you called, I've soo wanted to talk to you…"

"I'll bet."

"I have! You said you saw me on E! so I can assume you heard about my new show? It's getting all kinds of buzz and the press is all over me, I can't tell you how annoying it is." She didn't sound the least bit annoyed.

"Wow. Isn't it great to realize that every wish you ever made blowing birthday candles and...whatever... is finally paying off?"

"Years of hard work, pursuing my dreams, you mean?" she refused to rise to his bait. "Yes, it's better than great; it's fantastic!"

"Good. Then we're both getting the attention we always wanted. Can I give you a bit of advice?"

"Advice? From you? This ought to be good."

"Hog it."

"What?"

"The limelight. Hog it. Keep it to yourself. Don't share it and don't even think about dragging me into it with you."

"Why on earth would I drag you into it?" Trina scoffed.

"You dragged me into it in last night's segment just to keep the cameras on you for a few more seconds."

"I did not!"

"No? So the producers really are in talks to get me a guest appearance? Funny; I hadn't heard."

"Oh that!" Trina dismissed the previous night's indiscretion with a toss of her head. "Don't worry about that; so our names appear in Hot Spots for a week or two, who cares? There's no such thing as bad publicity, Logan."

"Out here in the real world, there is. I'm going for no publicity at all."

"Speaking of out there, where are you? No one will tell me where you live! Even that stupid Dicky Casablancas won't talk to me, although why I assumed he'd know anything is a mystery."

"Well, we're not in Hollywood, so I guess that puts us out on the raggedy edge somewhere, doesn't it?"

"I guess it doesn't really matter where you are, it's just embarrassing when people ask and I can't even get in touch with you! I'm so glad you called; now at least I have a number if I need you."

"When have you ever needed me?"

"Oh, that's right. It was always _you_ who needed _me_. How many times did I get the call to pick you up, drunk and disorderly in some border dive, or somebody's front lawn or the back seat of some random girl's car? Who do you call these days when you can't find your pants?"

"And yet you sound pissed that I disappeared off your radar."

"I guess I just thought that after all these years, you'd be able to look back with a teensy bit of gratitude for all the times I saved your ass from the sheriff or… Dad."

"You never once tried to save me from Dad."

"Logan-"

"I didn't call to talk about the good old days, Trina. I called to ask one more favor from you."

"A favor? Really. What's the problem, Veronica won't let you puke in her car?"

"Just…don't talk about me. _Please_. Not with the press and certainly not on camera."

"Oh, some favor! What, you think you're sooo interesting that I have nothing else to talk about? You still think it's all about you, don't you, Bro? Well, I've got news for you, sweetie; I'm the one people are talking about these days. Not Dad, not Lynne and not you. _Me_."

"Good. Let's keep it that way. Next time someone with a microphone asks about me, say 'no comment'. Think you can wrap your extremely practiced tongue around that? 'No. Comment'."

"Can I help it if every once in a while a journalista asks what you've been up to? I'm not responsible for your reputation as the Wunderkind of Trouble makers. Is it my fault that you still have a cult following in the biz?"

"Just don't-_What?_"

"Do you think I like it that there are still sad, lonely fans who show up with photos of Dad that they want me to sign? At least once a month, I run into weepy women who claim that they were Lynne's biggest fan. I try to get rid of them as fast as I can but they always manage to squeeze in a question about you."

"Fuck."

"Yeah, fuck! I'm not stupid, Logan. I know I only got this part because of my name but you know what? I don't care! I'll follow in the footsteps of Charlie, Angie, Colin, Kate and Gwynnie. I've got a real shot and I'm taking it. In a year, no one will refer to me as Aaron Echolls' daughter anymore. They'll be calling him Trina Echolls dad."

"Great! As long as they don't refer to me at all."

"Don't blame me that the world hasn't forgotten you exist yet. You never should have talked to Larry. I can't imagine what you were thinking."

"I got cornered." He mumbled.

"You? Mr. 'I can escape from any fix they put me in' got cornered? And Larry's show was your out? How in the world was that supposed to preserve your privacy?"

"I told you…Vanity Fair…"

"Jesus, Logan! Why didn't you talk to me? You should have let the article run! Nobody reads anymore and print disappears in a month. YouTube is forever! Do you have any idea how many hits that interview still gets, four years later?"

"It does?"

"HELL YES."

"Why?"

"Oh, you are so naïve, my baby brother. Your little five minute clip has everything; scandal, heartbreak, betrayal, sex, violence, two major stars and…"

"And what?"

"Well…_have you seen yourself_ on TV?"

"No."

"Look, I'm not gonna go all Angie here and try to make out with you at the Oscars but you look good enough to eat."

"Oh my God." Logan's lip curled in disgust.

"I know." Trina groaned. "Just saying it made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Believe me, I don't want to say it any more than you want to hear it but you're killer on screen. You have a cult following."

"Fuck."

"You're not as eloquent as you used to be." Trina smiled into the phone.

Logan was pacing his office now, his mind racing. He'd been disturbed by Trina's near miss on E! but he hadn't even considered the existence of that old interview. He shook his head, deciding that a four year old interview had no bearing on the present situation.

"Look, Trina; here's the thing. I'd rather you didn't mention me at all but _please_ don't ever say that I'm married. We don't want that info out there. It's why we went to the courthouse; it's why I changed my name. You know Veronica is with the FBI. It can only hurt her career if it's known that she married me."

"Oh, Yogi." Trina said, affronted. "Veronica is proud of you!"

"The hierarchy at the FBI won't be proud of an agent who married into a family of accused murderers."

"Charges dropped and Acquitted on all counts!" Trina pointed out, indignantly.

"At the FBI, 'acquitted' doesn't mean 'innocent'."

"It means 'Not Guilty'."

"It means 'fucked up prosecution' and in Veronica's case it means 'Error in Judgment'! That would be more than enough to spike her career!"

"Well, that's bullshit! The FBI could use a little publicity! A little bit of Veronica style glamour wouldn't hurt, either. If I were the FBI, I'd want her to be my spokes model!"

"The FBI doesn't have a spokes model!" Logan pinched the bridge of his nose as he shook his head. "Veronica wants to be a field agent! It would be bad enough for her if everyone knew she married the notorious scion of the bloody house of Echolls but if her picture starts showing up in the trades, her chances of going under cover would be torched, forever!"

"Oh. You mean like Johnny Depp in Donny Brasco? Is that what she wants? Isn't that dangerous?"

"Veronica likes dangerous."

"Clearly."

"It's what she wants."

"What about you? Doesn't the idea of her out there, on her own, in the belly of the beast freak you out?"

"I want her to get what she wants." Logan grimaced, trying to ignore how much it freaked him out.

"There you go, sounding all grown up again."

"It's what she's worked for her whole life and publicity will ruin it. You say there's no such thing as bad publicity; you want me to prove you wrong? Say one word about us and I'll come out there and start giving interviews. Who's gonna be interested in you when they could have me? I give much better talking head than you do."

"Fine!" Trina cried, a cold shot of reality running through her veins. She was suddenly glad that her brother was far, far away. "For you and Veronica, whom I adore, I will seal my lips. But what do you want me to say when they ask about you point blank?"

"Do they?"

"The females do." Trina said, dryly. "Cult following. I'm telling you."

"Short answers. Just never, ever mention that I'm married."

"If I told them you were married, maybe they'd give up."

"They all knew Dad was married, didn't they?"

"Touché." Trina conceded. "but you are nothing like Dad."

"That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"You're welcome, although I'm not really sure I meant it as a compliment. Are you gonna tell me where you live?"

"Keep your mouth shut and maybe I'll give you my address for Christmas."

"When they ask about you," she sighed. "I'll say 'he's doing swell, thanks for asking'. Okay?"

"He is doing _swell._"

"Good to hear, you snotty little prick!" Trina laughed again.

"Thanks for asking."

After the call ended, Logan stood and walked out of his library office. At the door, he turned and pitched the disposable phone in a perfect arc right into the trash can beside the desk.

* * *

Veronica spent the afternoon following the slim lead she'd unearthed that morning. The farther she followed it, the more excited she became.

"Tuski," she turned to the desk behind her. "Have you found payments to AAAN in the records of any of the subjects you're checking?"

"AAAN?" Tuski frowned. "That rings a bell. Let me see. Yes! Three of them have contributed money to that group in the last five years."

"Okay." Veronica turned and threw a pencil at Morris's back. "Morris!"

"What?" he didn't turn around. "Are you trying to get me in trouble?"

"This isn't grade school." Veronica said. "You're not gonna get in trouble. Has AAAN turned up in any of your subject's dossiers?"

"Yes." Morris turned and looked at the other two agents. "Not prominently. But their names are on donor lists."

"That's the connection." Veronica said.

"Connection to what? These are all peace activists." Tuski shook her head.

"What kind of 'peace activist' gets arrested for tossing cinder blocks off a highway overpass at cars and busses?" Veronica asked. "Anyone can call themselves a peace activist but when you get arrested for violent crimes, I think you forfeit the distinction."

"What exactly is the AAAN?" Morris asked.

"I've been checking into that organization all day." Veronica said. "On the surface, it seems to be just another innocuous charity but I turned over enough rocks until I found they've got connections to some shady operations. A cross check turned up that we've run into them before. We're talking terrorist watch lists, here."

"You found it." Morris nodded at her. "You get to go tell Larson."

"Give me the names on your dossiers, I'll bring it all in." Veronica ordered her two coworkers. Five minutes later, she was on her way upstairs.

* * *

Section Chief Jerry Larson looked up from his desk when his assistant opened the door to admit Agent Mars. His face remained blank as the young woman entered and stood in front of his desk.

Her blue eyes snapped and she was clearly trying to suppress a grin. It made her look far younger and much more beautiful than he remembered from the brief contact he'd had with her in section meetings.

"Sit down, Mars." He nodded at the chair in front of his desk. "What have you got?"

For the next fifteen minutes, Veronica filled the Section Chief in on the information she, Morris and Tuski had discovered about seven of the subjects who's dossiers they'd been combing for the past few weeks; All had been arrested for violent acts during the political convention held in St. Paul in 2008, all were members of a peace activist group and all had a connection to a thinly veiled terrorist support group.

"This is great, Mars." Larson said, looking at the files she'd laid on his desk. "this is exactly what we were afraid of. Good work."

"It certainly points to these people all using the peace movement as a cover for…well, for less peaceful activities."

"It's not a new trick." Larson nodded. "The anarchists, communists and now the terrorists have used the gullibility of starry eyed idealists by hiding behind their banners since…oh Hell, since the beginning of time."

"Cain probably called himself a Peace Activist against the Burning of Natural Resources and the misuse of Organic Agricultural products." Veronica said.

"You're pretty young to be so cynical." Larson commented.

"I'm older than I look, sir." Veronica shrugged.

"You sound like you're about 97."

"Some days are like that." She nodded. "Most people will take a dump on your ideals faster than shake your hand."

"No." Larson shook his head. "Most people are nice, upstanding folks, trying to be good citizens. Sure, everyone makes mistakes and falls to temptation on occasion but if I thought for one minute that all Peace Activists were fronting for terrorist organizations, I'd hand in my credentials tomorrow. We do this job to protect the nine out of ten people who need and deserve our protection. It's easy to believe they're all like the ten percent we pursue and prosecute because those are the folks we spend all our time on. You have to be careful not to become like a doctor who thinks the whole world is sick just because he never gets out of the hospital."

"How…long have you been with the bureau, may I ask?" Veronica asked, cocking her head.

"Since you were in diapers." Larson said with a half a grin.

"And you still believe in the basic goodness of most people?"

"Some days are harder than others." He conceded. "But if they're all criminals, what's the point of justice?"

"Don't you ever feel like we're wasting our time?"

"Of course I do. Everytime an investigation falls apart or a prosecution goes south or a son of a bitch pleads out."

"So…how do you deal with it?"

"I think of Harmon Killebrew."

"Because…everyone in Minnesota thinks of Harmon Killebrew constantly?"

"That's not true!" Larson frowned, offended. "We spend a great deal of time thinking about fishing."

Veronica raised her eyebrows and waited for the Section Chief to get back to his point. Larson sighed and patiently explained "Harmon Killebrew's career batting average was only .256. That means he struck out three out of four times at bat. But he also hit 573 homeruns."

"And that's a lot?"

"That's a _ton_. No one can hit that many dingers without striking out a lot, too."

"Is there such a thing as a cynical baseball fan?"

"Nope." Larson shook his head. "Baseball is the key to life."

"You sound like my Dad."

"I hear he's a hell of an investigator."

"He is." Veronica flushed with pride to think that her Section Chief at the FBI was aware of Keith Mars. "And he worries that I'm too cynical."

"It's an occupational hazard but the best investigators do manage to avoid it."

"Sir…" Veronica hadn't planned on asking any favors at this meeting but she had never been one to let an opportunity pass. "I need to talk to someone at OCB regarding a case I worked on years ago. Can you help me out?"

"You want to talk to OCB?" Larson was floored. "About what?"

"It was years ago, just after I got my PI license. I was investigating something unrelated and suddenly found myself with information on some pretty dangerous people. I backed off immediately but…I've been looking over my shoulder ever since and I'd feel better if I knew what they were up to."

"Dangerous people? _OCB_ dangerous?"

"Yeah. It was completely accidental but I'd sleep better at night if I knew the Russian mob had no memory of me at all."

"The _Russian mob_?"

"Yes."

"You got mixed up with the Russian mob." Larson repeated himself to make sure he understood the situation.

"No, not 'mixed up'. I just…inadvertently pissed off someone who may have been…connected."

"Mars…if you pissed off someone connected to the Russian mob, you'd be dead."

"I pissed off someone who may have been connected. His uncle promised me he wouldn't be a problem but I'd feel better if I could, you know…check him out myself from time to time."

Larson sat back and studied his rookie agent intently. _What the fucking fuck? Have we been coming at this Sorokin thing from the wrong angle? How in the world did this girl get involved… What's she going to do about it? That's a more interesting question._

"I'll make some calls." He suddenly said. "I can't promise any results. OCB is the most secretive organization this side of the CIA. In fact, I've known friendlier spooks in my time."

"Thank you, sir." Veronica smiled, thinking _what do you know? I should start listening to Mac more often._

* * *

Bryn sat at the island in the kitchen waiting for JR to finish his chores. She had taken him shopping at Byerly's, which was a mind blowing experience for him, as she knew it would be. Not even over the top Southern California could boast grocery stores with carpeting and an in-house pianist. But the best thing about Byerly's was the food selection. No matter what kind of exotic recipe you were cooking, Byerly's had the ingredients. They also had a fabulous delicatessen and in store bakery, candy store, ice cream parlor and jewelry shop. If Byerly's boasted a movie theater, they could call themselves a mall but fortunately for Minneapolis, Byerly's was content to remain simply the world's most comprehensive grocery store.

Now JR was finishing up the things he needed to do before he could take the Admiral's offer of the evening off. Bryn had asked JR if she could use his laptop to check her email. Classes at the University were starting in the next couple of weeks and it was time for her to start thinking about buying books and getting back into the swing of school. She had read her email, looked at her Facebook account and read the few blogs that she enjoyed every day but still, JR didn't come back.

She was about to see what kind of solitaire he had but a thought occurred to her and instead, she typed 'Trina Echolls' into the Google bar.

* * *

"I thought you guys left."

Bryn jumped in surprise when Logan came through the kitchen and opened the fridge.

"Didn't mean to scare you." He said as he took a long pull on the orange juice carton. "Where's JR?"

"He..uh..he's just finishing whatever…" Bryn stammered, staring at him.

"What?" Logan stared back.

"OH. Uh…Is it okay that I'm in here? I mean, in your_ house_. You barely know me. JR said you're not big on having strangers around."

"Oh, I know lots of people stranger than you."

"Ah, but as I said; you barely know me."

"You're Bryn." Logan took another swig of juice. "JR met you at the lake, you're studying folk lore and anthropology, you helped out all weekend and you're almost as scary as Veronica when you need to be. You have a younger brother named Fin who is learning to sail, knows how to work a deal, wants to drive my car when he gets his license, is pretty sure he can take Candy in a fight and has an awesome jump shot. Admiral Moneybags;" He stuck out his hand. "Nice to meet you."

"OH." She couldn't help smiling and shaking the offered hand. "Nice to formally meet you, Admiral. Apparently JR talks about me a lot more than he talks about you."

"Not talking about me is part of his job description. The only thing JR told me was your major, the rest I figured out on my own. Especially all the stuff about your brother."

"Sorry about that. I wouldn't have brought him if I had a choice. He was supposed to stay out of the way."

"I'm glad you brought him; watching him and Wallace clean up the court with Piz and Dick was a highlight of the weekend. Plus, I think Heather enjoyed having someone else around who wasn't geriatric."

"It's nice of you to say so." She smiled, then blurted without thinking, "God, little brothers are a pain in the ass."

"So I've heard. How much older than Fin are you?"

"Seven years."

"Seven?" Logan looked impressed. "Promise me if he ever pukes in your car, you'll just make him clean it up but you won't hold it over him forever; he'll feel stupid enough without that."

"Oh, Fin won't be puking in my car. He'll be doing that to Dog or Dood."

"Um…who?"

"The seventeen year old twins between Finbar and myself."

"And their names are 'Dog' and 'Dude'? I take it back; I don't know anyone stranger than you. I'm beginning to think your parents are worse than mine."

"They didn't name them 'Dog' and 'Dood', it just happened."

"How the hell does that just happen?"

"Easier than you think. Their given names are Augustus and Woodrow. We called Augustus 'Auggie', which became 'Auggie-doggie' which was cut down to 'Dog' years ago and Woodrow was 'Woody' but Dog kept calling him 'Doody' which is now just 'Dood'. See? Makes perfect sense."

"Who's the Larry McMurtry fan?"

"My Dad. Lonesome Dove is his favorite book."

"Most people don't even know it's a book."

"Most people are illiterate idiots." Bryn said sadly.

"Oh, a little literate alliteration!" Logan grinned, impressed.

"And my parents are great. It's the twins who corrupted their own names."

Just then, JR returned to the kitchen.

"Oh, man! Sorry that took so long," he said, discovering Bryn and Logan deep in conversation. "Everything is ready for dinner; all you have to do is toss the meat on the grill. I never meant to inflict unwanted company on you!"

"Don't be stupid." Logan said. "I like her better than I like you."

"I was talking to her." JR said, with an unspoken 'Duh'.

"You allow that kind of insubordination?" Bryn asked Logan.

"Good help is so hard to find." Logan said, sadly.

"Can we take the Range Rover, Dad?" JR asked.

"On two conditions; don't bring it back on empty and don't bring it back before midnight." Logan ordered, heading back to his office.

"Midnight?" Bryn jumped off her seat at the island. "My paw wants me home by ten!"

"It's okay," JR said, conspiratorially. "I park the car down the street and sneak into my place; he'll never know I'm there."

"You know," Bryn said, as they went out the back "He might have given us the keys to the Ferrari if you weren't such a snotty little prick."

"You are really bad at sexy talk." JR said, shaking his head as he followed her out the door.

* * *

An hour later, Veronica bounced in the back door and found Logan alone in the living room, playing video games.

"What are you doing in here on such a gorgeous day?" she demanded, dropping beside him on the couch.

"It's ninety degrees and sticky outside." He kept blasting away. "I like climate control."

"Ugh." Veronica picked up a controller and in a minute had killed everything on the screen, ending the game. "I've been stuck in a climate controlled office all day. Get your butt off the couch and come walk with me; I've got lots of good stuff to tell you."

"You could have let me kill everyone myself while you changed out of your fed costume." he complained.

"Come up and talk to me while I change. You spend way too much time on this couch."

Logan would never turn down an opportunity to watch Veronica change her clothes. He was up off the couch in a flash and following her up the stairs.

"So...I had a _great _day at work!" she said, kicking off her shoes the moment she reached the bedroom. She told Logan about her discovery of the link to a terrorist cover group and her meeting with Section Chief Larson.

"I got back to the bullpen and Blythe chewed me out for 'wandering around the plant' and when I told her that I'd been meeting with Larson, she got all flustered and yelled at me for bothering him. She tried to tell me there was some kind of protocol for bringing that kind of information up the chain of command and in the future, I'm to let her present all findings to the Section Chief but I know that's bullshit. Besides, Larson couldn't have been nicer to me."

She had changed her clothes as quickly as she rattled off the events of the day. Logan was slightly disappointed by the narrow window between 'dressed in work clothes' and 'dressed in play clothes'. There was really no gap for him to take advantage of. He was thoroughly amused by Veronica's excitement. He quickly forgot his momentary disappointment, knowing there would be plenty of opportunity to take advantage of her excitement later. She grabbed him by the hand and dragged him outside.

"You have to slow down," he laughed as they fell in to a more sedate pace in the extreme, sticky heat. "I got that you unearthed some incriminating evidence, pissed off your boss, amused your coworkers and possibly made a profitable connection with the big man but I'm sketchy on the details."

"Okay." She nodded, perfectly content to walk him through it all. "We've been doing these background checks on about two dozen people for weeks now..."

She filled him in on the breakthrough that had tied these seemingly random, harmless folks to a more insidious agenda.

"I'm telling you, Blythe acted like she was the head of the pep squad and just caught me getting out of the back seat of her boyfriend's car."

"You think there's anything going on between her and..?"

"NO. First of all, she's waaay too by the book to be knocking boots with the boss, secondly, he's a total fox and could do much better than her..."

"He's a what?"

"You know; one of those distinguished, silver haired older men type?"

"I know the type." Logan sneered. Veronica laughed.

"No, you don't." she shook her head. "He actually reminds me of Clemons! Bland, quiet, sees much more than he ever lets on..."

"You thought Clemons was a silver haired fox?" now Logan just looked confused.

"No. But you're mighty cute when you're jealous."

"I'm not jealous."

"You kinda are."

"I'm not."

"You are super cute." She laughed. "Larson's been married for twenty two years and he seems like the type of guy who wouldn't think cheating is worth the complications. Anyway, he immediately saw the significance of the connection we dug up-"

"_You _dug up."

"Okay, the connection _I_ dug up. We had a nice talk and he's going to get me a sit down with someone at OCB."

"The Organized Crime Bureau? Why?"

"What do you mean, _why_? So I can find out what Gory Sorokin is up to these days."

"Veronica!" Logan groaned. "I don't know why you can't just drop that!"

"Logan, the guy threatened to kill you. I can't just drop that."

"Lev assured us it was over. I believe him."

"You'd take the word of Lev Sorokin?"

"In this case, yes. I think if anything were going to happen, it would've happened by now."

"That's pretty much what Larson said. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure I'm worried about nothing. But I will sleep better at night if I can check it out, myself. Plus, it won't do us any harm to start a trail of inquiry if anything suspicious should ever happen in the future-"

"Nothing is gonna happen. It's over."

"That's all I want to prove to myself."

"That was all a long time ago and far from here. You have to stop obsessing about it."

"You really don't know me at all, do you?"

* * *

Veronica found Logan on the couch playing Video games every evening that week.

On Tuesday it didn't bother her that when she got home, Logan and JR were on the couch, blasting away. She hadn't heard anything from Larson regarding OCB but she really hadn't expected any results so fast.

On Wednesday she wasn't perturbed that Logan and Candy were locked in a sudden death PGA Tour playoff. There had been nothing but silence from Larson but she knew he was busy.

On Thursday she was slightly miffed to come home and find Logan and JR playing Call of Duty. She muttered something derogatory about guys who play games they've already beaten a dozen times and stomped upstairs, wondering if Larson wasted as much time as Logan did.

When she got home on Friday, after another day of silence from Larson regarding contact with OCB, to find Logan laying on the couch with his legs up on the back and his head hanging down in front, playing PGA challenge upside down, she lost it.

"Logan, what the hell are you doing?" she demanded.

"It's too easy right side up... Birdie!" he replied.

"I don't mean on the couch, I mean with your life!" she reached out and snatched the controller out of his hands. In an uncharacteristically clumsy move, he rolled to sit up and fell off the couch.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked, scrambling to his feet as she angrily snapped off the game.

"There's nothing wrong with _me_." she said, standing in front of him with her fists on her hips. "I'm a productive adult who goes to work every day and makes at least a small contribution to society. You, on the other hand, seem perfectly content to behave like a twelve year old on spring break, day after day after day, with nothing more to show for his time than the ability to sink a putt _upside down."_

"So?"

"So? _So? _LOGAN. This is exactly what I was afraid of! You can NOT fritter your life away sitting on that couch playing video games."

"I don't." He picked some imaginary lint off his sleeve. "I spent four hours on the lake today. I'm sunburned and exhausted. Just because I didn't spend the day cooped up in a windowless cubby hole spying on my fellow citizens doesn't mean I was frittering. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with frittering; you should try it sometime."

"I don't SPY on my fellow citizens."

"I never said you did."

"You implied-"

"Be careful; when you imply, you make an imp lie."

"_What?"_

_"_I don't know." He shrugged, completely unconcerned. "It works with 'assume'."

"I'm glad you got to be out there, enjoying another gorgeous, hot summer day Logan, really; I am! but what are you going to do when the weather changes? This is Minnesota; it's going to get cold. Really, really cold. Are you planning on taking up snow shoeing? Or are you just going to lay on that gorram couch all day long, playing _stupid, mindless games?"_

_"_Let me guess; still no word from OCB or info on our old friend, Gory 'the gimp' Sorokin?"

"This isn't about me, it's about you. It's about you, _pissing away _your brains, talent and education!"

"What brains and talent?"

"Oh, DON'T you even TRY to pull that 'I'm so stupid' crap with me; I KNOW YOU!"

"Then you oughtta know; I don't HAVE to make a contribution to society! I PAY OTHERS TO DO IT FOR ME!"

"Do you _want_ me to taze you?" her voice had gotten dangerously quiet.

"I would love to see you try." he grinned.

"Are you...are you _trying_ to piss me off? You think this is funny?"

"You are sooo smokin'."

"LOGAN." She squeezed her eyes shut and threw her head back, her arms stiff at her sides and her hands clenched into fists in an almost superhuman effort to control her temper. When she looked at him again, he was watching her, his face a mask of innocence; an expression she knew, all too well.

"The next thing you're going to do is remind me that you _told me_ part of JR's job was to get drugs and hookers," she said, through gritted teeth. "This is no good, Logan. You have _got_ to find a more productive way to spend your time! I don't even care what it is; volunteer at a soup kitchen or a food shelf; read to the elderly; join a book club..." she faltered as the look of dismay on his face deepened with each suggestion and she had to admit (to herself, anyway) that the idea of Logan actually doing any of those things was beyond her imagination but she bravely soldiered on. "Learn to play a musical instrument; take a class on engine repair or cooking or... or basket weaving! I DON'T CARE. Anything at all, as long as you have something to show for youself at the end of the day besides the _ability to sink a putt upside down!"_

Logan said nothing but watched, fascinated, as his wife tried to calm down. When he was sure she was finished, he sighed and stood up. Placing both hands on her shoulders, he turned her and sat her on the couch in his place. Without a word, he went into the library. Returning a few moments later, he knelt on the floor in front of her and placed a stack of papers on her lap. She looked at it, frowning.

It was the first few chapters of a manuscript.

To Be Continued...


	23. Chapter 23 Love Her to Death

Chapter 23 Love Her To Death

"What is this?" Veronica asked stupidly, staring at the stack of pages Logan had placed on her lap.

"Early fruits of my frittering." He told her.

"You've been _writing?" _Veronica's eyebrows crept toward her hairline.

"Yeah."

"You've been writing _a lot_." She lifted the stack on her lap, impressed.

"Yeah."

"When?" She looked at him, on his knees in front of her. The first time she had seen that expression on his face had been years ago, when he'd objected to being a boy in the girl's bathroom.

"I manage to squeeze it in during those moments when I'm not feeling particularly frivolous. Although I have to admit, it's as much fun as golf. Of course," he frowned, "if I were better at golf, I may think differently."

"Is it an autobiography?" somehow, that's the first thing that popped into Veronica's head.

"God no!" Logan grimaced in distaste. "Why on Earth would I do that? It's a murder mystery."

"And it's not autobiographical?" she teased.

"It's not _my _life. Read it." He nodded at the pages he'd given her. "This is just rough draft of the first couple of chapters. I only finished the outline last week, so I'm really just beginning but it turns out it's…well, I don't know if it's any good but I'm having fun."

"Logan, this is great! This is—"

"Read it first." He cut her off. "You might hate it. You may find I'm a no talent hack."

"I may find you're a hack," she shrugged, lifting the top page, "but I'd never say you had _no_ talent."

"Good enough." He stood. "You read. Meanwhile, there are large chunks of meat just dying to get thrown on the grill."

"I'll read," she said, turning her attention to the first page. "But that meat had better already be dead."

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, he came back into the living room. She was still sitting in the corner of the couch where he'd left her. She turned over the last page and looked up at him, an awe struck look on her face.

He waited.

"Logan," she finally said, shaking her head. "I read it twice. This is _amazing_!"

He blew out a deep breath he'd been holding and his whole body relaxed as he fell into the armchair, relieved.

"I mean it!" she said, looking at the pages in her lap. "It's well written, evocative, intriguing, dramatic and _funny_!"

"You got all that out of two chapters?" he raised his eyebrow skeptically.

"I got all of that out of the _first paragraph_. The opening line grabbed me by the throat and dragged me in!" she said, enthusiastically. "And I laughed out loud before I got to the second page! You have a gift for depicting a character's personality in a line or two and your descriptions…I could see it in my mind's eye, perfectly!" she looked at him in wonder. "I had no idea you could do this."

"What do you mean?" he looked offended. " I'm an award winning essayist."

"You're a what?"

"Senior year?" he prompted, his hands describing a headline in the air. "What Freedom means to me?"

"You plagiarized Easy Rider." She scoffed.

"Only the first paragraph, which you apparently never read beyond." he smirked. "The rest of those two pages were all me."

"Well, if they were anywhere near as good as this, then I guess you deserved to win that contest." She conceded. "This is really, really good."

"Dinner's ready." He stood up and offered her his hand. "Come and tell me how talented I am while we eat."

* * *

"I don't know why I'm so surprised." She said as they ate out on the patio in the back yard. JR had left a cold pasta salad and a plate of sliced tomatoes to go with the steaks Logan grilled. "You've always been good at telling a story through video images and you clearly have a way with words, it's just that I never thought of you as…"

"As…?"

"Well, writing is supposed to be something that takes solitude, discipline and the ability to sit still and concentrate." She exclaimed.

"That's just bullshit made up by writers and you _know_ they can't be trusted."

"As in Twain claiming that writing was just glorified lying?"

"Yep. I hear he was kicked out of the club for giving away trade secrets."

"Really?" She widened her eyes, encouraging his nonsense.

"Nope. Made that up just now. See? I'm a natural."

"But you have to see my point." She insisted, laughing. "You've never come across as possessing any of those particular attributes."

"Again, you disappoint me. As the keen observer of human nature that you are, I thought you saw through people better than that."

"I've always had a blind spot where you're concerned. I know that."

"No you haven't. You learned a hard lesson the last time you went searching for warts."

"Hey, I learned that I love you to death, warts and all!"

"And all it took was months of misery, broken hearts, collateral damage, two abductions, torture, blood shed, lives threatened and ended, coverups...you almost _did_ love me to death."

"Jesus. Get over it." She snorted. "I just meant that for all your delicious faults, I sometimes miss the good stuff."

"On balance, probably a good thing."

"You constantly surprise me. That's a very good thing."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"It's just hard to reconcile the idea of you, King of the 09er mob, all alone with your word processor, weaving tales of mystery and romance."

"Did you think I put those videos together while partying with my pack of snorting broheims?"

"I guess I just didn't think about it, you know? You; being all observant and in your head."

"Don't think of it that way. Think of it as me; making shit up."

"That, I can swallow." Veronica chuckled. "Maybe I should try it."

"Nah, your shit is too extemporaneous. Seat of the pants. Elusive. Can't be caught on paper, like mine."

"So who are your influences? Twain? L'Amour? Kerouac?"

"Hmmm... you gotta admit; all that alcohol in high school? Pretty Hemingwayesque."

"I was worried about you winding up like Hemingway but not the writing part." She shoveled another bite of steak into her mouth. "And you can cook, too!" she sighed. "I'm the luckiest girl in the world."

"I'm glad you like it." He said, looking at her as though she were the one who had produced something remarkable.

"But why didn't you tell me?" she asked, always coming back to the point.

"That I can cook? I thought you knew." He answered, always trying to avoid the point.

"Why didn't you tell me you were thinking of writing?" she specified.

"I didn't want you to suck all the fun out of it." He said, wrinkling his nose.

"Is that what I do?" she asked, trying to swallow her smile.

"Oh, yeah." He nodded seriously while stabbing a bite of his steak. "All the time. That's why I married you; to tone down the inordinate amount of fun in my life. Whenever I find myself feeling giddy or having too good a time, I remember that I'm married to Veronica the Wet Blanket and I find my equilibrium."

"Glad I could help." She took another tomato slice off the plate. "How long have you been working on this?"

"I've been thinking about it for a while. I only started actually doing it after we moved in here."

"And you didn't tell me? You just let me think you were spending your days…frolicking in the sun?"

"I believe the word was 'frittering' and I do plenty of that as well." He admitted.

"Why?"

"It helps me think." He shrugged. "I tend to focus better when I'm tired."

"No, I mean why didn't you tell me?" she explained. He looked at her for a moment, then went back to his steak before answering.

"I wasn't sure it was something I could even do and…" he peeked at her from under his brows. "… I didn't want you to know about it until I was sure it was something I really _wanted_ to do."

"Are we back to that whole 'fun sucking' thing?"

"Well, yeah. You know how you are!" He leaned back in his chair. "If you knew I was thinking of writing a novel, you'd force me to finish it; even if it sucked or I found out I hated writing."

"I would…" Veronica meant to say 'not' but her honesty got the best of her. "Yeah, I probably would."

"Mostly though," he admitted, looking out across their back yard, "I just couldn't stand the thought of disappointing you."

"Oh, Logan." She bit her lip. The memory of Logan breaking up with her, saying _but you never need anything _was still painful; it was the first time she'd been forced to realize that her behavior hurt him. "I've disappointed you more often than you've ever disappointed me."

"No you haven't!" he looked at her and frowned as though that were the dumbest thing he'd ever heard.

"Well, I'm very proud of you." She smiled. "I notice you set your story in a ritzy little beach community in southern California."

"They say you should write about what you know."

"What do you know about murder?" she reached out a bare foot and prodded his leg.

"You mean, besides having been accused of a couple? Not much but I have my sources."

"Yeah? who?"

"Your Dad." He grinned at the look on her face as he dropped that little bomb.

"My _Dad_? Dad knows about this?"

"The whole thing was his idea." He laughed as her mouth fell open in surprise.

"Luuuucy!" she finally said. "You got some 'splainin' to do."

"You know that your Dad's publisher has been pressuring him to come up with something new, after 'Big Murder, Small Town'?"

"I knew that Lloyd thought Dad's experience was a mother lode of plots and characters that ought to be tapped." Lloyd Blankenship was the newsman who had collaborated with Sheriff Mars on the book about the investigation and aftermath of Lily Kane's murder. Lloyd is the one who had contacts in the publishing world and had in fact, done the actual writing of Keith's book. They had split the modest royalties. "But I thought Lloyd gave up on Dad years ago."

"Lloyd did. Then, the publisher called him again at the beginning of the year. Had something to do with Hollywood green lighting Janet Evanovich's first Stephanie Plum novel, I think."

"Ah! The fog clears."

"Evanovich, Grafton; girl P.I.s are hot."

"I always thought so." Veronica smirked.

"Me too. The only problem is the Sheriff has no time or interest in writing."

"And no talent." Veronica injected. "I've read all his case files. He's a 'just the facts, Ma'am' type, not a story teller."

"Right. So, we got to talking about all that—"

"When?" That's the aspect of this whole situation that most mystified Veronica.

"Torrey Pines. You can cover a lot over the course of eighteen holes." Over the last few years, Sheriff Mars had become Logan Echolls' most frequent guest at the club.

"Well, damn!" Veronica sat back in defeat. "I miss out on more information because I don't like sports!"

"Anyway, the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to try it, so we decided—"

"'We'? I thought you were just consulting with Dad?"

"I'd say it was more of a collaborative effort. This plot is based on one of his earlier cases. We went through a bunch of files and found this one…I'm changing all the details; in fact, the files he gave me are heavily redacted to protect client confidentiality. Also, it's a novel; I'm not confining myself to actual history, it's just a framework; an idea."

"Not _your_ life but based on Dad's." She said in wonder.

"Yeah; when I have something finished, he'll bring it to the publisher."

"What happens then?"

"I don't know. If it's anything like movie making, editors will pound it into something unrecognizable, aimed at the lowest common denominator and therefore highly commercial, and publish a best seller. I don't really care what the end result is."

"You're not worried about artistic integrity?"

"Considering my blood lines, it's a safe bet that such crap was bred right out of me."

"You're a born sell-out?" she frowned.

"Born sold out and cynical. What wasn't bred out was certainly beaten out of me at an early age."

"If that were true, we would't be here."

"I found a few role models outside my immediate circle," Logan admitted, thinking of a homeless vet and a former sheriff in Neptune.

"I'd say you became the man you are, not so much in spite of but in _defiance_ of your upbringing."

"I like your romatic illusions." He grinned at her.

"They're not illusions." she reminded him. "I know who you really are and so do you. You told me yourself that you learned in the desert that you were nothing like either of your parents, so don't try to pull that crap with me. Let's say this book gets published. What if it's a hit?"

"Then we get to keep doing it." He said, unconcerned.

"No, Logan; have you thought this through?" she shook her head. "A crime novel by Logan Echolls is _going to_ sell. That's the end of your anonymity! The end of all this!"

"First of all, I'm not Logan Echolls anymore, remember? So if that asshole writes a book it won't affect us at all."

"He's not an asshole and you'd have to do a book tour. What are you gonna do? 'Cause I gotta tell you; a pair of glasses isn't gonna protect your secret identity."

"Sounds like you're calling Lois Lane an idiot."

"No, that would sound like this; Lois Lane is an idiot."

"So what are you saying?"

"Lois Lane is an idiot. But you're not Clark Kent."

"Second of all," he ticked off his fingers. "I wouldn't use that name under any circumstances. If I'm gonna do this, it's gonna stand or fall on its own merits, not because of some misguided name recognition. And there's no way in hell I'm doing a book tour. Ever."

"Your publisher might have a different opinion on that; when Dad's book came out—"

"Third, I've written all of two chapters. You're getting way ahead of me, here."

"You two need to think about this. You're determined to remain in the back ground and Dad didn't particularly relish his four month stint as the literary star of the moment. Vindication is great and the publicity did give the business a bump but the grind of the tour wore him out. Although," she grimaced,"a lot of women thought he was hot on TV."

"Well, that settles it; your Dad gets to be the face of crime fiction; he could probably benefit from a groupie or two."

"Ew! You're right; getting waay ahead of the game, here." She shook her head to dispel the image of her father with groupies while refusing to even contemplate the idea of Logan on a book tour. "Getting back to the matter at hand; what I read is great and it's…I'm so glad you're doing it! I can't get over how good it is so far! Will you let me read more when you have it?"

"If it'll keep you off my back while I play Halo, then yes."

"You'd love me on your back while you play Halo."

"I always prefer you on my front and you know it."

"Your novel's heroine seems vaguely familiar." Veronica refused to allow him to distract her.

"The petite blond with the personality of a pit bull?" he grinned.

"It's been my experience that pit bulls are sweet and charming creatures." She smiled, demurely, eating a slice of tomato.

"Of course they are." He agreed, eyeing what was left of her steak. "The trick is to lavish them with affection and feed them well."

"But you gotta change her name."

"You don't like her name?" He laughed.

"'Melodica Vors'?" she made a face. "It's a terrible name! Sounds like the Latin word for a viral infection."

"Maybe it's meant to."

"Melodica isn't even a name." she said. "It's a funny little mouth organ with piano keys."

"You put it to your lips and blow?" he grinned. "Maybe that's why I like it."

* * *

JR and Bryn were sitting at an outdoor table at Brit's pub on the Nicollet Mall. A wide, winding, tree lined street in the heart of downtown Minneapolis, Nicollette was closed to all traffic but buses. Tall buildings housing diners, bars, boutiques and department stores drew people to the Mall all year round but during the summer months it was at its best; the bars and restaurants all set out tables on the broad sidewalk boulevards, street musicians and other performers could be found on every corner and Orchestra hall frequently featured free, outdoor concerts. Brit's, right across the street from the Hall, was a prime place to enjoy adult beverages, scotch eggs and a string quartet.

JR peeked at Bryn. She was nursing a Guinness and staring across the street toward the music. He watched her for a few moments. She didn't blink or shift her gaze as bikers, bladers and pedestrians crossed between them and the musicians. JR was no expert on women but he could tell when one was totally distracted.

After several conversational gambits failed, he gave up. After five minutes of silence, he took the bull by the horns.

"Are we totally comfortable being silent with each other or are you just bored out of your mind?"

She looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise. She smiled and said "I'm sorry. I'm not bored at all, I've just been thinking. I do that, on occasion."

"You _think_? Oh my God; sometimes _I _think! We have so much in common." He shook his head in wonder.

"You're such a dork." She grinned, turning her gaze back toward the musicians across the street.

"Something else we have in common." He sipped his beer.

"I am a dork," she acquiesced "but my dates don't usually point that out to me."

"That's because you're hot. Most guys don't look beyond that."

"Why thank you." She looked at him again. "What gave me away?"

"Anthropology, not so much. But Folk tales? That's just a fancy pants way for academics to study sci-fi and fantasy. Translation; total dork."

"Wow. You really _do_ think." She said, impressed.

"I try. I think a lot about things that interest me. What were you thinking about?"

"Oh. Um…nothing."

"Liar."

"How long have you worked for Logan?" she blurted.

"Full time?" JR's heart sank as he realized he wasn't completely surprised by her question. "Only since graduation last spring. I thought I told you that."

"So did you work for him part time before that or what?" she pressed. "How did that work?"

"He…uh…why do you ask?" JR's gloom deepened. _Great. I knew I shouldn't have left her alone. What did it take, five minutes for him to work his evil magic?_

"I'm just curious." she shrugged.

"About Moneybags?" He asked, slumping back in his chair. _I probably shouldn't blame him. He wasn't even trying. Damn._

"I'm sorry," she said, misunderstanding his reluctance to talk. "He told me that not talking about him was part of your job description."

"He told you that, huh?" JR said, grumpily. "Did he mention that he's married to an insanely jealous woman with fire arms training and a license to kill?"

"NO." she looked at him with a frown. "Veronica's not insanely jealous."

"Puh-huh!" JR blew out, exaggeratedly nodding his head. "Although, maybe what looks insane is just common sense. Maybe she'd be nuts _not_ to be jealous."

"What are you talking about?" Bryn demanded.

"What do you think I'm talking about? You're alone with him for what, ten minutes? And you think about him all night! What do you think it's like when a girl's had, say a half an hour of his attention? He said he could get any girl in the back of his car in twenty minutes and I have no reason to believe he's blowing smoke, do I?"

"He _said_ that?" Bryn cried. "He _did not_ say that."

"He doesn't _do_ it; he was making a point." JR back pedaled, not wanting to encourage Bryn or cast unfair aspersions on Logan. "In all the years I've known him, he's been crazy in love with Mars."

"You call him 'Moneybags' but you call her 'Mars'." Bryn said, connecting the dots.

"_What? _Yeah; Logan and Veronica Mars. So what?"

"Mars is _her_ name, isn't it?"

"The name fits her, too;" JR warned. "she'd kill you. _And_ she'd get away with it. She'd probably pin it on me for bringing you into the house. You may think I'm exaggerating but believe me; your body would never be found and there wouldn't be a shred of evidence against her, so don't waste another minute of your time wondering about Logan. And I won't waste another minute of your time, either. Let's go."

He stood up and looked at her, waiting. He expected indignation and denial or at least embarrassment.

She burst out laughing.

"Sit down, you nutbucket!" she laughed, reaching for his hand. "I'm not interested in your boss!"

"You're not?" he eyed her suspiciously but sank back into his chair.

"No!" she shook her head and looked at him as though he were crazy. "I'm interested in _you_. I'm just curious as to how a nice, sweet, normal guy like you came to be working for…Trina Echolls' brother."

"Whu…uh.._WHAT? _What makes you say THAT?" blindsided, JR tried to bluff.

"You are a terrible liar." Bryn shook her head. "I like that about you."

"Are you _crazy_? Where in the world did you come up with _that_?" JR persisted in his attempt to dissuade her.

"I …uh…" Bryn blew out a breath and rolled her eyes, embarrassed. "I happened to walk into the room the other night and they were all watching her on TV. I didn't know who she was or why they cared, so I Googled her."

"She's just some lame ass, D-list, loser actress." JR said, dismissively.

"Who _just happened_ to grow up in the same town as you."

"Yeah. She went to Neptune high with the rest of the rich and famous spawn. I went to Pan. So?"

"And she _just happens_ to appear in several family photos with her parents the movie stars and her brother, who_ just happens_ to be a dead ringer for your boss, Logan 'Moneybags' _Mars_." Bryn looked at JR with raised eyebrows and lifted her palms in the universal gesture for 'oops'. JR stared back, his eyes and mouth agape, completely at a loss for how to salvage the situation.

So he gave up.

"Ohhhh." He dropped his face into his hands. "Fuuuuuuuuuudge."

"Hey!" Bryn put her hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry. I'm not gonna say anything."

"You're not?" JR lifted his head and looked at her, sadly. "You're not gonna run home and call your best friend and tell her in strict confidence that Logan Echolls is living here in town?"

"If I did, do you know what she'd say?" Bryn explained. "She'd say 'who the hell is Logan Echolls?'"

"She would?" JR looked confused.

"Yeah." Bryn nodded. "Cuz you know what? As cute as your man crush on your boss is…"

"I don't have a man crush!" JR objected loudly, sitting up straight in horror.

"…when you get right down to it, who the hell is Logan Echolls?" Bryn ignored his protest.

"You didn't Google much beyond the pictures, did you?" JR sagged again.

"No, and you know why? Because I don't care. I was curious about an actress I saw on TV. Now I know the connection." She shrugged a shoulder and took a sip of beer. "Whatever."

"_Whatever_?" JR glared at her. "Do you have any idea how much trouble I'll be in if he finds out you know? Now I'll have to marry you, just to keep your mouth shut."

"Sweet offer but no thanks. You have to get over your West Coast thinking. Out there, everyone and their brother is either in the entertainment business or some kind of entertainment parasite. We have real lives here. We. Don't. Care."

"Really?" JR looked skeptical.

Bryn sighed. Then she motioned to the waiter, who came to their table.

"Ready for another?" he asked.

"Yes." She smiled up at him. "I'll have another Guinness. I met Logan Echolls."

"Great! Is that a Guinness for you too, sir?" the waiter turned to JR, smiling brightly.

"Did you hear what she said?" JR frowned at him. "She said we met Logan Echolls."

"I…don't know what that is." The young man said, apologetically.

"Yes." JR nodded. "Guinness for me, too."

Bryn looked pointedly at JR as the waiter headed off to fetch their beers.

"So, maybe he's just stupid." JR shrugged.

"Maybe you're just paranoid." She raised an eyebrow.

"I wish! You have no idea what it's been like. If you had followed any of the links past Trina, you'd know... You remember that old show 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous'? Well, my boss has been the star of a reality show that could be called... 'Hurricane Echolls' for as long as I've known him."

"Well, his Dad was accused of some pretty horrific stuff." Bryn nodded, sympathetically.

"All of which he was guilty of." JR said quietly. "And a boatload of other shit, too. Did you know that the girl who's head Aaron bashed in was Logan's girlfriend? That Aaron had been screwing her for some time before he killed her?"

"Logan's girlfriend?" Bryn winced.

"She was Mars' best friend, too. Did you know that Aaron tried to kill her, as well?"

"no."

"Locked her in a freezer and set it on fire."

"omigod." Bryn shivered, in spite of the heat of the evening.

"I met Moneybags when he moved into my hotel after his mom threw herself off the Coronado bridge," JR said, speaking softly so no one could overhear them. "and his dad was sitting in jail on murder charges and a motorcycle gang burned his house to the ground..."

"Oh!"

"That was just the beginning." JR cut her off. "The same night Aaron tried to barbecue Veronica, Logan was beaten almost to death but according to the cops, somehow managed to knife one of his assailants to death. So the first year he lived at the Grand, he had to wear one of those ankle monitors as terms for his release."

"Jesus!"

"It got much worse. At least that first year, Logan was still a minor and his dad was alive so the hyenas in the press spent most of their time prowling around digging up dirt on Aaron. Also, Logan's buddy, Duncan Kane and his folks were embroiled in some heavy legal shit, too so there were enough people in the spotlight to take some of the heat off Logan. But after the acquittal, and the Kanes all moved away, it's like the Admiral was left, holding the entire shit bag of scandal for all of southern California. Since Aaron blew his brains out _in my hotel _a week after he got out of jail, and some kid jumped off the roof the same night, all of which happened while Logan lived in the penthouse, the rumors about him just kept getting bigger and uglier, instead of dying out and going away. As an employee, I heard stuff that curled my toes; things people said about him. Things they actually believed."

"But...you didn't?"

"None of it squared with what I actually saw. When you work in service like that, you kind of become like the furniture. They get so used to having you around that they forget you're there. They say stuff and do stuff they never would in front of anyone else. You can see the truth, if you bother looking."

"So you saw the truth behind all the rumors?"

"He lived in my penthouse for five years. Believe me, he's no saint. He's done stuff that would straighten my hair, but he's not a monster or a freak. He's just a guy who's always had too much money and no...rules to live by. But that doesn't make good copy, does it? No one's interested in getting to the truth, they just want to build their audience and sell more ad space."

"But that was all a long time ago..."

"You don't get it! Just last year, Mars and I discovered one of the housekeeping staff had planted a hidden camera in his suite. I'm not gonna tell you what we went through to get that memory card back. Reporters stalked him for years! Who knows how many got jobs at the hotel? We had members of the housekeeping staff who were making money on the side, taking pictures and making secret recordings. After one asshole masqueraded as his long lost brother to get a story, he requested that I be the only hotel emplyee allowed into his suite alone. The head of security backed his request and I became his..."

"Aide de camp."

"Yeah. Sort of. At first, I thought he was nuts, too. Who wouldn't? But within six months, I found out that Logan isn't crazy. When they couldn't get into the hotel anymore, they began lying in wait outside. They followed him to school, the beach, on vacation...you're not paranoid if they really are out to get you."

"No. But...you're not in Kansas, anymore."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That it's a damn good thing that Minneapolis isn't Hollywood. Aaron Echolls, the actual Oscar winning movie star/rapist/killer could be sitting here with OJ Simpson and you know what people would think? They'd think 'oh, how nice; a free concert at Orchestra Hall'."

"Really?" JR sighed.

"Yes." Bryn nodded. "Where you come from, celebrities are like the weather is here; on everyone's mind all the time because it's a fact of life that effects everything else. How interested in the weather are people in southern California?"

"Not very. Nothing ever changes."

"No. Blizzards and tornadoes are just things you see on the news or read about in the papers; they happen somewhere else. That's how little we think of celebrities."

"Well, if a blizzard _did_ happen in Neptune, people would sure as shit talk about it!" JR said, thinking he'd found a hole in her theory.

"Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard lived in Stillwater, about thirty miles east of here for like, ten years. She used to come into town to buy needlepoint. My Mom ran into her once and thought she was an old classmate because she looked so familiar. It wasn't until she spoke that Mom realized who she was and her reaction wasn't 'Omigod, you won an Oscar for Tootsie!', it was 'Oh, I'm sorry,_ you_ didn't go to Southwest high.' Without hair, makeup and lighting, Mom said she looked just like every other Edina housewife."

"She's actually won two Oscars."

"Who cares? Her needlepoint sucks; she only knows the continental stitch."

"What?" JR shook his head in confusion.

"Only hacks use the continental." Bryn said, disparagingly. "It looks terrible and leaves ridges!"

"I'm…I don't know what we're talking about anymore."

"Jessica Lange. Try to keep up. Also, on at least one occasion, my aunt saw Baryshnikov when he must have been in town visiting their daughter. She was stopped at a red light and he was crossing the street and she thought 'my, that's a good looking man' and it wasn't till he looked right at her that she recognized him. Then you know what she did?"

"What?" JR was almost afraid to ask.

"The light turned green so she went to Target."

"I have a feeling you're trying to tell me something." He took a swig of his Guinness.

"I'm just saying; you're like a guard dog, growling over a bone, not noticing that everyone you think is a threat has their own steak. The truth is, if you're ever afraid of your boss's privacy being invaded around here, all you have to do to distract the invader is ask 'think we're gonna get much snow this winter?' That will divert everyone from climbing the family trees of notorious, dead movie stars."

"You don't talk about the weather that much."

"That's because I'm still trying to impress you." She said, batting her eyes.

"Really?" JR brightened up more than he had since this conversation started.

"Yes. So please don't toy with my emotions by tossing out the 'M' word so cavalierly again or you just may break my fragile heart..."

"I'll be careful!" he laughed.

"...and I'll have to grind you to dust and ask Veronica how to dispose of your body."

* * *

"What time is he landing?" Veronica asked Logan for the third time. They had cleaned up after dinner and were in the living room, playing cribbage and watching the sunset reflecting off the lake. They had come in to escape the heat and mosquitoes.

"He'll call us. Why didn't he use the jet?" Logan discarded into the crib.

"He figured out what it would cost." she sighed, choosing her own discards for the crib. "Flying the jet out to bring him here would cost about ten times as much as buying him a first class ticket. He had a hard enough time accepting that much from us. Once he'd figured out the cost of the jet, he'd have a heart attack before he'd let you send it for him."

"Next time, we'll send him a bus ticket." Logan grumbled, cutting the deck so Veronica could turn up a card.

"You don't get it, do you?" Veronica knew that Logan found his father in law's reluctance to indulge in their largesse tedious.

"Nope."

"It's a pride thing." She started the count with a seven. "You've only been his son in law for a couple of months. He feels like he'd be taking advantage."

"He's supposed to take advantage of it; that's the whole point of having money." Logan threw an eight and took two for fifteen.

"In time, I'm sure he'll get used to it." Veronica put down another eight and took two for the pair. "Someday, he'll stop being embarrassed that you can fly him all over the world but he can't do the same for us."

"You mean he'll stop being pissed that you live with me now and not him. That I'm your next of kin?"

"Lord no. He'll never get over _that_." She frowned as Logan dropped another eight, bringing the count to 31 for two and taking an additional six for the three eights. "But he'll learn to live with it."

"He hates me."

"He doesn't hate you." Veronica started a new count. "Anymore."

"He does. He hates me because now he knows for a fact that you're sleeping with me."

"Oh." Veronica smiled, remembering her Dad saying _'Oh honey, I figured that out from the way you looked at each other.' _"He's known that for years."

"It's a wonder he hasn't killed me. He's hated me since the first time he threw me out of your apartment. Go."

"Come on! You're the son he never had. You think he wouldn't have thrown a son out once or twice?" Veronica took a point for the go.

"For bangin' his daughter? You're sick."

"Um...you hadn't done any such thing at the time and if he thought you had, he'd have shot you, not thrown you out. He tossed your ass for acting like a jerk and busting up the furniture."

"If he doesn't hate me, why won't he use my jet?" Logan took a point for the last card.

"He doesn't want to abuse your hospitality by using your jet when a first class ticket does the same job for a fraction of the cost. I got fifteen for two, four and a run of four for eight."

"Well, it seems like he won't let me send the jet because he doesn't want to owe me because he hates me. I'm supposed to count first. Fifteen two and a double run for eight is ten."

"He already owes you! He knows you saved me in the desert. He couldn't be more grateful if you'd saved _his_ life out there. Oh wait; you did!"

"He doesn't know that." Logan reminded her as he moved his peg forward. "Think he'd like me well enough to use my jet if I gave him grand kids?"

"Maybe. Of course, then he'd _definitely_ know you're banging me." Veronica grinned.

"He'd probably convince himself you conceived immaculately."

"Not when there are five or six little boys running around here who all look exactly like you," she said, wistfully.

"Five or six, huh? You know, there's a more productive way to spend this time waiting for your Dad's flight..." Logan's eyes slid down Veronica's body.

"If it would make you feel any better..." she cut him off, moving her peg forward.

"Oh, hell yes!" he sat up straight.

"... he used to take the Kane's jet whenever he could and he _hates_ the Kanes."

"Oh." He relaxed again. "That actually does make me feel better. I'm taking nibs."

"You don't have nibs." she looked at his cards.

"No, but you do and I'm taking it."

"Oh. Damn." Veronica frowned at the jack in her hand, then picked up her crib.

"Maybe we should be playing Go Fish." Logan looked at her as he collected the cards. "You don't seem to be able to give the game the necessary attention."

"No, but it's the only chance you have of beating me, isn't it? This crib sucks. Four."

"Plus a run of three, thank you."

"Uuughh." Veronica watched as he stole the points she'd missed in her hand. "When's he landing?"

* * *

Keith's flight from L.A. landed shortly after eleven. He called the kids from the plane as soon as he could and they were waiting at baggage claim by the time he came out of the terminal.

"Daddy!" Veronica launched herself into his arms as soon as he came out the double doors. He was delighted to hug the daughter he hadn't seen in two months. Logan watched the reunion, amazed and fascinated by the depth of affection the Mars felt for each other. It was a phenomenon that had been completely lacking in his own upbringing. His parents had always gone through the motions for the benefit of onlookers but Logan knew that with Keith and Veronica it was real. It was a big part of why he loved them both so much.

_And I took her away. _He thought, seeing the look on Keith's face as he lifted his daughter off the ground. _Maybe he really does hate me. I'd hate anyone who took her away from me._

No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than his father in law let go of Veronica and turned to him with open arms.

"And you!" Keith said, giving Logan a big hug. "You keeping your nose clean, away from the bright lights and big city?"

"Trying." Logan smirked, remembering the first time Sheriff Mars had ever hugged him, standing in the desert near the bloody remains of Liam Fitzpatrick. Terror and bloodshed be damned; that had been a really good day.

"You know perfectly well what he's been up to, Dad." Veronica said. "Seeing as it was your idea and all. He spilled the beans about your big, secret project."

"Which big secret project would that be?" Keith asked innocently, as he put his carry-on into the trunk of the Audi.

"That thing I was hoping Logan would be passionate about, which you were already in on. I really think that you two must be punished somehow for keeping me out of the loop but mostly I'm just excited about it. Wait till you read what he's done so far! It's really, really good."

"Well, I'm glad your wife likes your work." Keith laughed and chucked Logan on the shoulder. "But that's about as objective as praise from your mother, isn't it?"

"Oh, um...I don't know." Logan shrugged, at a loss.

"She won't take a compliment from me about her photography," Keith laughed. "she claims I don't know what I'm talking about and I'd love anything she does and she might be right but I really do think she's good."

"She is good!" Logan was sure about that.

"He's good." she assured her dad. "You'll see. But we've decided; you have to do the book tour, not Logan."

"Book tour?" Keith looked at Logan, confused. "Are you finished already?"

"I've got rough drafts of the first two chapters, and V gave me a great title this evening." Logan told him as they got in the car.

"I did?" Veronica said, as Keith asked "What's the title?"

"How about 'Love Her to Death'?" Logan suggested.

"Ooh. I like it." Keith nodded. "But I don't think you're ready for a tour yet."

"Nah, she's about two years ahead of us, there."

"I just said you both need to think about it." Veronica clarified.

"Oh. Well, we'll worry about that when the time comes." Keith said. "No sense in losing sleep over it, now."

The middle of the night was not the time to show off Minneapolis to Keith, so they just got home as quickly as they could, arriving at the house just after midnight. Logan didn't pull the car into the garage, but stopped in the drive.

"JR lives upstairs." Logan nodded toward the second floor over the four vehicle stalls.

"Whoa." Keith got out of the car and looked around at the large, grassy lawn beneath the trees filled with twinkle lights. "Nice yard."

"Wait'll you see it in the morning!" Veronica bounced along next to him as they walked to the house. "The lake is gorgeous."

Keith had known perfectly well that Logan had serious money and he was familiar with how the other half lived from years of socializing and working in Neptune. He'd been inside many estates much larger and more luxurious and far more ostentatious than the house on Cedar Lake but the realization that this was his daughter's home; that Logan and Veronica _lived_ here, still knocked him speechless.

It made the fact that they were married seem more real to him than anything had yet. He said nothing for a few moments, not trusting his voice, as he nodded and looked around with approval.

He hoped they could tell by the look on his face how proud he was of them.

"Are you hungry?" Veronica asked, going to the fridge. "We've got leftover pasta, cold cuts..."

"No." Keith croaked. "They fed us some meat like substance on the plane. It was good."

"Ah; first class!" Veronica nodded, knowingly. "Back in coach, they don't even give you the peanut like substance anymore. I'm gonna make us some popcorn." She pulled a couple of beers out of the door. "You guys sit down."

"No, no. Show me the rest of the place, first. Popcorn later." Keith said, accepting the beer.

They gave him the full tour and soon were on the couch, eating popcorn while catching up with all that had happened in the months since the wedding.

Veronica finally looked at the clock when Keith cracked an enormous yawn.

"Holy crap, it's one thirty." she laughed. "Dad, you must be exhausted!"

"No, no; it's only 11:30 to me. It's just so great to see you again." Keith protested, but he looked wiped out.

"11:30 is way past your bed time." Veronica admonished. "Unless you're on a stake out, full of bad coffee, you belong in bed after ten. It's only been a couple of months since I lived with you, you know. I remember."

"Do you want to get up and kick box with us in the morning?" Logan suggested, teasing. "I'm sure Mr. Tucker could teach you a trick or two."

"Kick boxing? You mean to tell me you got _Veronica_ kick boxing?" Keith looked at his daughter, incredulous.

"I'm good at it, too." she said.

"It's her favorite hour of the week." Logan said. "She actually gets to kick the shit out of the hired help."

"Yeah, JR's not very good." Veronica said as Keith laughed. "But he's getting better."

"I'll be there." Keith promised. "I can't promise I'll participate but I wouldn't miss the chance to see Veronica sweat."

* * *

A short while later, Veronica and Keith said goodnight in the hallway upstairs.

"I've missed you so much!" she said, hugging her dad. "You have no idea!"

"No, I'm sure I don't." he said, hugging her back. "I haven't missed you at all. Either of you."

"Ha. I'll bet. You couldn't wait for me to grow up and move away so you could break out with the booze and cheap women, could you?"

"Booze? Cheap women? Dang. I knew there was something I forgot to do."

"See you in the morning." she turned for her bedroom.

"Oh. I've waited months to hear you say that." Keith said, happily, going into his own room.

* * *

"If we could talk him into moving here, then everything would be perfect." Veronica said, snuggling up to Logan in the dark.

"Or if we could at least talk him into using the jet whenever." Logan teased.

"Mmmm. Did you notice how quickly he shoved me aside at the airport so he could grab you?" she murmured.

"Yeah. Man, he practically threw you off him, didn't he?"

"It's scary how much he hates you."

"Well, let's make sure he doesn't hate me in vain." Logan said, rolling on top of her.

She did not protest.

* * *

JR served them breakfast on the patio in the morning. When Mr. Tucker arrived from the course at 10: 36, they all went down to the gym. Logan, Keith and Tucker talked golf for a few minutes, while JR and Veronica warmed up. Keith watched for a little while and when he was satisfied that his non-sports inclined daughter was actually learning self defense skills, he went back upstairs to read the paper and have another cup of coffee.

He looked around in amazement at the breathtaking views out all the windows, then went into the back yard to sit in the shade on the patio. He was moving on to the second section of the Star Tribune when he heard the bell ring.

Putting the paper down, he looked into the house. Through the glass walls, he could see right through the house to the lake beyond but the one thing he couldn't see through was the front door. The bell rang a second time and his curiousity got the better of him.

He dropped the paper on the table and carried his coffee into the kitchen. The chimes of the doorbell were still reverberating through the house when he opened the front door and found himself face to face with the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on or imagined in his entire life.

"Oh. Hi!" said Marla.

To be continued...


	24. Chapter 24 Hard Bargains

Chapter 24 Hard Bargains

Marla almost dropped the brightly wrapped package she was holding when the door opened and she found herself face to face with a stranger.

"Oh. Hi!" she said, in surprise.

"Hello." He said, smiling.

"I'm sorry," Marla laughed. "But every time I knock on this door, someone new opens it."

"I'm Keith Mars," he said, extending a hand. "I'm in town for the long weekend."

"Oh. I'm sorry to intrude; I didn't know Logan and Veronica had guests…" Marla said, starting to turn away.

"What intrude?" Keith protested. "I'm not guests, I'm family! Come in, come in!"

"Are you sure?" Marla asked as she came inside. "It's just that I found out it was Veronica's birthday…" she held up the package.

"Oh, that is so nice of you. The kids are still downstairs with the kickboxing coach but I was just having another cup of coffee in the back, if you wouldn't mind waiting?"

"I'd love a cup of coffee." Marla smiled again, accompanying him to the kitchen.

* * *

"Jeez, Jeff! I said I was sorry." Veronica said as they came up the basement stairs. "But it's your own fault; if you'd held the pads steadier, it never would've happened."

"SHE'S RIGHT." Joe barked, trailing his students up the stairs. "You didn't have a good GRIP on it. I told you she kicks harder than you THINK."

"Yeah, yeah; and her bite is worse than her bark." JR grumbled. "I know."

"How's your arm now?" Logan asked, solicitously.

"It's fine." JR insisted, holding up his arm and twisting his hand back and forth, demonstrating his full use of the limb. "She just surprised me, she didn't break anything."

"Well, you sure sounded like I broke something." Veronica said, gleefully.

"I was just _surprised!"_

"But it's fine now, right?" Logan asked.

"Yeah, of course." JR assured him his arm was uninjured.

"Good." Logan nodded, spinning toward the kitchen and flashing two fingers on each hand at JR. "I'll have two eggs; over easy."

"Can I at least take a shower, first?" JR asked, rolling his eyes.

"Of course!" Veronica patted his shoulder before following her husband. "You're way too sweaty and gross to be in our kitchen!"

"You two take such good care of me!" JR said with such exaggerated sigh of gratitude that Veronica laughed.

"Chop chop!" Logan called, pulling the cold water carafe out of the refrigerator. "I'm starving."

"Next Tuesday?" JR said to Joe.

"YEP." Joe nodded. "But you need to PRACTICE on your off days or that little girl will continue to KICK YOUR ASS."

"Believe me; the humiliation alone is enough to keep me practicing." JR grumbled.

* * *

In the kitchen, Logan peeled a banana while Veronica poured herself a large tumbler of cold water. She glanced out the back windows to see her Dad laughing on the patio.

She touched Logan's side. "Either F-Minus is really funny today or we company."

"F-Minus is always really funny." Logan said around a mouthful of banana. "And you know we have company. Skinny, goofy looking bald guy? Perpetually suspicious expression? Goes by the name of 'Dad'?"

Ignoring him, Veronica pushed open the door to the patio. There, just out of sight of the windows, was the cause of Keith's amusement.

"…he said 'You're making my wife nervous, don't ever do that again!'" Marla was saying.

"Marla!" Veronica's face broke into a smile as her father roared with laughter.

"Oh, hey!" Marla turned her attention to Veronica, who dropped into the chair between the Sheriff and the Realtor and Logan, who followed her out the kitchen door. She looked him over, critically. "Again, I find you not wearing a shirt."

"How disappointed would you be if I were?" Logan smirked as he took the fourth chair at the table. Keith smacked him lightly on the shoulder.

"Go put on a shirt." he ordered. Logan jumped up and ducked into the house.

"What brings you here this morning?" Veronica asked. "Selling anything else in the neighborhood?"

"Nope, no business." Marla said. "But you serve such good coffee here and I heard it was your birthday!"

"From whom?" Veronica asked.

"A little bird told me." Marla said with a smile, drawing the flat, gift wrapped package out of her large bag and placing it on the table as Logan came back outside, now wearing a gray t-shirt.

"Candy." Logan guessed, dropping back into the last chair.

"How do you know?" Keith asked, looking at the gift wrapped package in front of Marla. "It might not be candy."

"Candy is a _boy!" _Marla and Veronica said in unison, breaking each other up.

"Barely, but he's getting there." Logan said dryly, adjusting his shirt, as though he weren't used to wearing one.

"What?" Keith frowned, completely confused. "what kind of a name is Candy for a guy?"

"Trust me; it fits." Logan assured him.

"Yes, Candy told me all about your big bash last week and the concert." Marla said. "At first I was skeptical but then I remembered that you told me you had a birthday coming up."

"Why were you skeptical?" Veronica asked.

"He claims he got in a brawl." Marla explained with a look that said volumes.

"It was hardly a brawl…" Veronica said.

"One punch and a whole lotta squealing isn't my definition of a brawl." Logan smirked.

"I've seen prize fights that didn't rise to your definition of a brawl." Keith pointed out. Logan conceded the point with a shrug and a smirk.

"Someone actually hit _Candy_?" Marla asked. "Who would do such a thing? That would be like kicking a lamb!"

"You never mentioned a brawl." Keith said to Veronica.

"It wasn't a brawl!" she insisted. "Piz misconstrued Candy's interest in Parker, that's all!"

"_Stosh Piznarski_ got in a fight with a guy named Candy?" Keith's eyes flew wide.

"Well, who else is Piz gonna punch?" Logan asked, reasonably. "You don't think he'd pick a fight with a guy named 'Duke', do you? We're talking about the guy who played dead the instant I attacked him."

"I thought he was your friend?" Marla looked at Logan. "Why did you attack him?"

"No reason." Logan shrugged.

"I didn't think he'd get in a fight with anyone." Keith loftily informed Logan. "Stosh always struck me as far too level headed for that sort of behavior."

"He wasn't too level headed last Saturday. V says it was a bigger mismatch than ours was." Logan shook his head.

"You took Stosh apart brick by brick." Keith remembered.

"Yeah but at least he didn't _cry_. Anyway, it's not like I'm the only guy who ever thought he had to make a point with poachers!" Logan defended himself .

"Poachers, husbands, fathers…" Keith enumerated as Logan frowned at him.

"Piz never poached on you!" Veronica inserted wearily, as one who had made this argument before.

"…deputies, mobsters…" Keith went on, grinning back at Logan.

"Poachers? _Candy?"_ Marla asked Veronica.

"It was all a misunderstanding!" Veronica said. She gave Keith and Marla a quick synopsis of drama of the week before. "…and now Piz and Parker are engaged, so I'd say Parker played her hand to perfection."

"Smart girl." Marla nodded.

"I don't know. She's engaged _to Piz." _Logan said, making a face. Veronica punched him. "Ow!" he laughed but rubbed his arm.

"Plus, she got a free make over out of it." Marla went on, ignoring them. "Candy's good; I let him do my hair."

"He must be good." Keith said. "Your hair looks terrific."

"Thank you." Marla smiled.

"You wrecked my arm." Logan whined to Veronica, who pouted at him.

"Quit being such a baby," Keith said, ruffling Logan's hair. "At least _pretend_ you're not afraid of her!"

"She knows I'm afraid of her!" Logan laughed.

"Enough with the chit chat," Veronica turned her back on the ridiculous boys and grabbed the present off the table. "Is this for ME?"

"It is!" Marla told her. "As soon as Candy mentioned your birthday, I knew I had to give it to you."

Keith sat back and smiled as Veronica, who always treated every present, no matter how silly or insignificant, as though it were a trip to Disneyland, ripped the wrappings off. His eyes flicked back and forth between the two women as they talked and laughed in the morning sunshine.

Veronica tore off the last of the wrapping paper, revealing a small coffee table book called 'Interior Desecrations; Hideous Homes from the Horrible '70's'.

"James Lileks is a local writer." Marla indicated the author. "He's hilarious. Listen to this;" she took the book from Veronica's hand, opened the front cover and read; "Sweet smoking Jesus, what was the matter with these people? Who knows? But we do need to accept the fact that otherwise sensible American housewives who would never grind a Quaalude into their morning coffee or sleep with their tennis instructor never the less went daft during the 1970s and performed heinous acts of design on unsuspecting homes…" She looked up at Veronica with her dimples flashing and read "…if you think the '80s were dumber than the 70s, either you weren't there or you weren't paying attention.'! I _told you!_ This book is proof!"

"Oh the seventies were brutal_."_ Keith agreed, grimacing. "Avocado green and burnt orange, everywhere."

"I KNOW!" Marla cried. "But Veronica didn't believe me!"

"Gimme that back." Veronica snatched the book out of Marla's hands and began to page through it. As she did so, Marla told Keith about their adventures in estate sales.

"Oh my God!" Veronica gasped. She held the book up so Logan could see the full page photo. "Honey!" she said with exaggerated enthusiasm, "Let's do _this _in the living room!"

"Sweet smoking Jesus!" Logan said, alarmed by the photo of a room wallpapered in broad stripes of brown and tan that was ugly enough to cause an aneurism all on its own but to make matters worse, the couch was upholstered in the exact same pattern.

"Ugh!" Keith blinked. "You'd need Quaaludes in your coffee to live in a room like that!"

"Oh, that's just the beginning." Marla warned. "Matching the wallpaper to the upholstery was nothing to those barbarians!"

"Here's one where the caption is simply 'There is No God' and I must admit; it's a hard argument to counter." Veronica said, amazed. Logan hopped up and came around the table to look over her shoulder at the photos.

"If we stare at that wallpaper long enough, will Mickey Mouse or the Eiffel tower pop out?" He asked.

"No," Veronica said, closing her eyes painfully. "But I'm beginning to understand why people thought 'Welcome Back, Kotter' was funny."

"Nobody thought Welcome Back, Kotter was funny." Marla shook her head. "We watched it because John Travolta was dreamy."

"Was he, though?" Veronica asked. "I mean, next to that couch, Quasimodo would look dreamy."

"_I_ thought 'Welcome Back, Kotter' was funny." Keith said to no one in particular.

"The dreaminess of John Travolta is one if the few things the seventies got right." Marla insisted.

"Some of the music was pretty good." Keith asserted.

"Yes, it was." Marla said, standing. "And now, I must thank you for the coffee and be on my way; Elliot and I have an open house this afternoon."

Keith jumped to his feet and extended a hand to Marla. "It was very nice meeting you!"

"Likewise." Marla said, taking his hand. "I hope you enjoy your stay."

"I'll walk you out." Veronica said standing, still looking at the book. "I've got to get into the shower before JR gets breakfast on the table. Omigod, _look at this one_!"

"Unbelievable, isn't it?" Marla said, dropping Keith's hand as she headed for the kitchen door with Veronica, who had burst out laughing again as Logan retook his seat and poured himself some coffee.

Keith watched the women go into the house then sat back at the table and picked up his own coffee mug. He lifted the newspaper and was about to open the metro section when he caught the eye of his son in law.

Logan was watching the Sheriff with a bland smile on his face, his expression one of complete innocence. It was a look Keith had learned to distrust years ago. He frowned and opened the paper. He tried to interest himself in a story on the State Fair, which was going on in St. Paul but he could feel Logan's eyes on him.

"WHAT?" he finally said, dropping the paper and meeting Logan's guileless expression.

"What?" Logan asked.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Like what?"

"YOU KNOW."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Logan insisted, mildly.

"Fine. Quit staring at me." Keith picked up the paper again. Logan smirked.

"WHAT?" Keith demanded. Logan picked up his coffee mug and carefully sipped from it.

"She's forty five," he finally said, "divorced, no kids, runs her own small but successful real estate firm with her partner, Elliot. She's smart, funny and thinks the world of your daughter."

"Yes, it's obvious that they enjoy each other's company but why do you assume I—" Keith blustered.

"I'm just sayin'."

"Look, I'm here visiting my daughter and son in law, whom I haven't seen in months. I didn't come here to meet women. So just because a remarkably beautiful—"

"And funny."

"—and funny, yes…"

"Smart."

"Yeah, funny and smart, whatever…" Keith nodded, conceding each of Logan's points.

"Baseball fan."

"—woman who…What?" Keith stared at Logan, having completely forgotten whatever point he'd been trying to make.

"_And_ she thinks bald men are hot." Logan picked up the sports page, demonstrating his belief that he'd had the last word.

Keith stared at him, stupidly.

"She likes bald?" he finally said.

"I didn't believe it, either." Logan said absently, as his eyes scanned the box scores. "But she stood right there and told us so."

"Women like bald men." Keith said, defensively. "You'd be surprised."

"Oh, I am."

"Lots of women like bald men."

"Yeah, I'm sure the world is just _packed_ with beautiful, smart, funny women who like baseball and mentally undress men's heads."

"Uh, well…." Keith stammered. "Do you think she also likes jazz?"

Logan looked up at his father in law as though he'd just admitted to enjoying roasted puppies for an appetizer. "_THAT'S_ a deal breaker?"

"No, it's just…uh…" Keith looked into the house. He couldn't see all the way through to the street so he didn't know if Veronica and Marla were still out front. Then he shook his head as though to clear it.

"No. NO." he said. "I'm here to see you two. Not to meet women."

"I'm touched." Logan bent his eyes back to the scores. "Idiot."

"You should be." Keith muttered as he took a swig of coffee. "Smart ass."

* * *

It was after twelve by the time JR cleaned up the brunch dishes. The blazing sun was beating down relentlessly but the humidity was holding off. To let Keith have some one on one time with Veronica, Logan had gone off to Calhoun to surf for an hour or so. Veronica and Keith watched him pull out in the Range Rover before setting off on their plan to walk off their bacon and eggs around Lake of the Isles.

"This really is a gorgeous place!" Keith looked around the yard, taking in the beautiful house, the large, velvety lawn and the towering cottonwoods lining the back of the lot, keeping it largely in shade all day. He nodded toward the four stall garage. "So, Logan filled the garage apartment, after all?"

"Yeah. Turns out he'd had a deal with Jeff all along." Veronica cut her eyes at her Dad, wondering just how many secrets her father and husband shared. "But I suppose you knew about that already, didn't you?"

"No. I was planning on taking my retirement here." Keith said, sadly.

"I was going to buy you a riding mower and everything." Veronica said with an exaggerated sigh.

"You were going to put me to work?" Keith asked, incredulously as they walked down the drive.

"Hey, 'Idle hands are the Devil's workshop', am I right?" she said, virtuously. "I didn't want you to get bored and I hate to break it to you but… your whittling sucks."

"It's true. I was never very good with knives." He shook his head, as though it pained him to admit to this shortcoming in his manly skills. "How's it working out? Having Jeff on hand?"

"Uh, great actually! I wasn't sure about it at first, but it's turned out to be a really good set up. Logan wanted him close enough to have at his beck and call, which actually works both ways; we can kick him out as well as summon his presence at a moment's notice."

"Summon his presence? Sounds like you're getting used to your new socio-economic reality." Keith looked appreciatively across the lake at their doorstep.

"It's not that as much as it's…we're trying to find common ground between his reality and mine."

"His reality _is_ yours now, Veronica." Her dad reminded her.

"Says the guy who wouldn't use the jet." she snorted.

"It belongs to you, not me. Like this house. This place." He gestured at the lake and the parkway around them as they walked. "You can pretty much afford to live any life you want. My God. Do you have any idea how happy it makes me to know that?"

"All I want is a normal life, Dad. It's all I've ever wanted."

"You joined the FBI for normal?" he grinned.

"Normal for me!"

"You married Logan for normal?" He laughed.

"Okay, maybe I did that for other reasons than normal. Better than normal."

"Good. I think he did, too."

"Believe it or not, Dad; it's what he wants, too. He couldn't be happier to be out of the public eye."

"I know…" Keith said. _I've known what Logan wants for years. And I know how far he's willing to go to get it. _"So, how's he adjusting to normal life?"

"Well, that's one of the reasons I'm glad that Jeff is here. Not just for the service thing but as someone Logan knows and trusts. Dad?" Veronica bit her lip, hesitant.

"What? Is there something wrong?" Despite the hot sun, Keith felt a cold shot of dread.

"Does…did you ever think of Logan as lonely?"

"OH." Keith grinned in relief. "Well, yeah. Of course."

"Of _course_?" Veronica stopped in her tracks and stared at her father in surprise. "Since when?"

"Since the day I was too late to recover the stolen tapes he bought from Leo." He shrugged.

"Oh." She resumed walking. "He told me you caught him crying."

"Up till then, like everyone else, I assumed he was just another spoiled, privileged brat who acted out from arrogance and a need for attention. Then I caught him in a moment of total honesty; not a trace of cockiness or bluster. He didn't try to hide it, deny it or justify it." Keith chuffed a laugh and shook his head. "Only Logan could be completely honest while committing a felony."

"He is good, isn't he?" Veronica wrinkled her nose and smiled.

"Honey, your husband is _great_!"

"He trusted you, even back then."

"I know." Keith nodded. "What does that tell you?"

"That…he was a stellar judge of character?"

"Well yeah, of course there's that. But I also think it was because he had absolutely no one else he could confide in. He was relieved that there was someone else who knew."

"Wow…" they walked a few paces down the sun dappled sidewalk. "He said there was no way in Hell he'd ever let you live over our garage."

"Well, I guess no one wants their over protective father in law living closer than three states away…"

"Actually…he said if you wanted to move here, he'd buy you a house." Veronica admitted with a grin as her Dad burst out laughing.

"Life is funny," he said. "I never could have predicted all this for you. Who knew Logan Echolls would turn out to be one of the good guys?"

"He always was one of the good guys." She said, gently elbowing him.

"Yeah," Keith conceded. "Even during the years when he was hauled into the station every other week, he always made me want to laugh."

"Really?"

"Well, laugh or slap the smirk off his face. It was always a close run thing."

"Still is. He does have the knack of being infuriating." Veronica said the word 'infuriating' as though it were the most wonderful personality trait one could possess. Keith laughed again, knowing full well that a man who didn't enrage his daughter on occasion would soon bore her to distraction.

"You have a knack for that, yourself." He said.

"I can't imagine where I get it from."

* * *

They walked past the Cedar Lake beach to the parkway and down past the channel to Lake of the Isles. Veronica pointed out the bike trail that she and Logan had taken to Target Field. She promised Keith that someday they'd take in a game there.

As they walked, Keith filled Veronica in on some of the more interesting cases he was working on and she told him about the break in the case she was working.

"Back when I was your age, we called that kind of stuff 'civil disobedience'," Keith mused. "Now it's classified as 'domestic terrorism'."

"Well, you can go all ACLU on me if you want, Dad but when the behavior at hand includes homemade napalm bombs and throwing cinder blocks at cars on the highway from an overpass, I'd say you blew past the line of disobedience into terrorism at about 90 miles an hour."

"Homemade napalm bombs?" Keith shuddered.

"The press hasn't gotten that tasty little tidbit, yet." She informed him. "But as one who has seen some of the evidence, this isn't a case of Big Brother strong arming some innocent civilians."

"Good."

"Although, I'm sure that happens on occasion. I mean, come on! When you were Sheriff, sometimes you had to…pressure people to convince yourself they were innocent, right?"

"Yeah, but you have to be really careful. It's a lot easier as a PI. If I do things that are…unorthodox, it doesn't necessarily taint a case or mess up a prosecution. I just have to satisfy a client, not prove beyond a reasonable doubt."

"That's true. When I get out into the field, I'm going to have to be careful to go by the book or I'll screw things up and I know better than anyone how awful it is to see the guilty walk because the case got messed up. You know, they've been working on this domestic terrorism case for _two years_? Larson wants this one to be airtight when it goes to court."

They talked about all the ways a case could implode, explode and otherwise slide off the rails between the gathering of evidence and courtroom testimony until Keith abruptly changed the subject.

"Where the heck are we?" He said, stopping in his tracks and looking all around. "The Magic Kingdom? Where's Frontierland?"

"It's pretty, isn't it?" Veronica smiled. They were on the south side of Lake of the Isles, between the bridge over the canal which lead to Cedar Lake and the one over the lagoon leading to Calhoun. The trees cast shadows over the walkway and the day lilies were blooming at the water's edge. From where they stood, stately mansions marched off in either direction and the downtown skyline seemed to rise right up behind the islands in the middle of the lake. Although Isles was inaccessible to sailboats, there were several canoes and kayaks out on the water, many of whom had rented their boats and paddled over from Calhoun. Behind them the woods opened up just enough for a fenced in dog park where pet owners could let their animals run free under the trees. There were several of them on the benches inside the fenced enclosure, watching their dogs charge around free of their leashes.

"So far, you've only seen two of the lakes outside our door. Logan's on a third one which is right through those trees and this afternoon, I'll take you on the grand round to see the whole chain!" Veronica bounced on her toes. "Wait till you see it all, Dad! We're having so much fun."

"Good! I want you to show me everything, I want to see the photos you've been taking, I want to read what Logan's written so far…we have a lot to get done in three days!"

* * *

Elliot uncorked the bottle of Cabernet and poured out two large crystal glasses. He had just buzzed Marla in for their usual post-open house rehash. It was his very favorite part of selling houses. Today's open had been a beautiful little craftsman in Tangletown, just a couple of blocks off the Minnehaha Creek parkway. They'd had a lot of traffic, considering how difficult that particular neighborhood was to navigate.

Built where the land dipped into a low, wide, wooded ravine, with the creek winding along the bottom like an unraveled ball of yarn, the streets of Tangletown no longer had the straight, square lines of most of the city. The neighborhood between Fiftieth and Fifty-fourth streets and Lyndale and Nicolette Avenues was a maze of curving, twisting, completely tangled up boulevards, all of which descended to the parkway along tree covered hills. The houses were an eclectic mish mash of stately stone mansions and picturesque clapboard cottages.

It wasn't an easy part of town to negotiate but it had been a beautiful, sunny day and the foot traffic had been high. All the nosy-josies had been out, just dying to peek through the closets of a beautiful little house in one of the most interesting parts of town.

Showing a house in such a great neighborhood always made for a fun day but the post-op was the best part. He and Marla would split a bottle of wine, eat a little take out and go over the visitor list, weed out all those who were obviously not seriously looking and divide up those who merited a follow up phone call.

They liked to get toasted and mock the customers.

Marla could practically smell pretension in people; a gift she said she picked up while being married to the most pretentious ass in town, and she had an uncanny ability to pick out the would-be buyers (almost always couples) who tried to puff themselves off as richer, savvier and more worldly than they really were. Elliot thought it spoke volumes about his partner in that she always treated such boors with professionalism and deference while he just wanted to shoo them out the door, saying "Clearly, this house is not for you."

Most of all, Elliot loved to make fun of the way people dressed.

Marla pushed open his front door and strode purposefully into his apartment.

"Elliot," she announced, "I need your tickets to the zoo!"

* * *

Veronica and Keith met Logan back at the house early in the afternoon. They jumped in Veronica's Audi and took Keith on a tour of their favorite places in town. Since they'd only been in Minneapolis for a little over six weeks, these places were fairly concentrated on the Lake Parkways. They lived on Cedar, Keith and Veronica had walked around Isles, so they drove around Calhoun, planning to stop back in the evening for dinner at the Tin Fish, then drove over the hill to Lake Harriet.

They parked and explored the Rose Gardens and Japanese Rock Garden on the North East end of the lake. After that, they hit the Minnehaha parkway and drove along the winding, heavily wooded streets past Lake Nokomis and all the way to Minnehaha Falls. Logan, having biked the route far more often than Veronica, pointed out some of his favorite finds along the way; foot bridges that he liked, where the water fountains were; which beaches had shade, which had playgrounds or floating docks and the Hiawatha golf course near Nokomis.

They took their time on the tour, stopping the car to get out and explore everything Keith expressed an interest in. As they drove and walked, Logan talked about learning a new style of surfing, the joy of being completely anonymous in a strange city and the challenge of writing a story.

Veronica told them about the difficulty of her new job and being the smallest cog in a big machine despite knowing she had the ability to be a much bigger cog, the fun of developing new contacts and sources without any of her former resources and the joy of rekindling her love of photography. She had her camera with her and took lots of pictures.

Keith gave them the barest outline of some of the cases he was working on but he had lots of disturbing yet hilarious anecdotes starring their favorite corrupt official; Vinnie VanLowe.

"I swear, if your house gets robbed, Vinnie will find the guys who did it but you really need to hide your silver during the investigation!" Keith said as Veronica and Logan laughed.

By the time they got back to the Tin Fish, the dinner rush was long over and most of the customers were only interested in ice cream. They ordered their meal and sat by the lake as they waited.

The sun was setting on the far side of the lake, which was still covered in sails, surf boards and canoes. Veronica sipped her white wine and mentally framed compositions around the two most important people in her world as they drank their beers and discussed the case upon which Logan's book was based. Few people were ordering food from the grill but the park was still crowded with pedestrians, bicycles, families pushing strollers and obvious couples on dates. She tuned out the conversation between her men and began taking photos. They barely noticed when she set her wine glass on the table and walked off to the grass behind the canoe rental shack to snap some shots of the sunset over the lake.

She was just framing the two of them, silhouetted against the lake and the setting sun, deep in conversation, surrounded by what looked like the best party of all time, when her cell rang. Sinking to the grass, she fished her phone out of her pocket and set her camera in her lap.

She smiled when she saw the display and brought the phone to her ear.

"Hey, you! Did you call to find out if I've suffered any internal damage from laughing too hard at that book you gave me? 'Cause I think I may have ruptured something!"

"Oh, good!" Marla laughed. "Um…I was actually calling to see if the three of you have any plans tomorrow night?"

* * *

"My zoo tickets?" Elliot asked, blankly. Realization dawned and he gasped. "You mean tomorrow night? NO!"

"Why not? It's just one show. I need two extras. You've let me use your extra ticket before."

"Tough. Just because you never bring a date—your girl friends only count if you're a closet lesbian, by the way—doesn't mean I never have a date!"

"But you dumped that asshole Tracy two weeks ago! I remember it well; you moped for three days. A waste of time, since he was such a turd."

"Not Tracy!" Elliot sighed in exasperation. "_Brick_!"

"What?"

"Who." Elliot corrected her.

"Brick?" Marla looked as confused as a cat who'd been sprayed in the face with a water bottle.

"Criminy, Doll!" Elliot threw back his head in a long suffering gesture. "I told you about him! Jeez, I knew you were distracted this afternoon but for Heaven's sake; I talked about him all day!"

"You were talking about a _guy_? I thought you were talking about the house."

"Really."

"Yes! 'Brick is dependable, brick is classic, brick is strong and durable'…" she shrugged.

"What about when I said Brick loves enchiladas?"

"Yeah, I thought that was a bit weird." Marla admitted. "Did you really pick him up at Home Depot?"

Elliot folded his arms.

"Come on, sweetie;" Marla wheedled. "You know I wouldn't ask if it weren't important!"

He snorted, derisively.

"I've been thinking about it all day," Marla's voice dropped from the wheedling whine to her best no-nonsense, negotiator's tone, "and I'm willing to trade."

He raised his eyebrows.

She drew a deep breath, shook her head and said, "I'll give you my tickets to the Grand Stand show next week for your tickets to the Zoo tomorrow."

"What?" Elliot squeaked, abandoning his tough pretense in an instant. "That's Donald Fagan, Michael MacDonald _and_ Boz Scaggs! Why would you be willing to make such an uneven trade? You've been dying to see them as much as I have!"

"Because..!" Marla squeezed her eyes shut as though speaking caused her pain. "Because he'll be gone next week!"

"I KNEW IT." Elliot thundered, throwing his arms in the air and dancing around his dining room.

"Shut up." Marla said, weakly.

"Marla's met a man! Marla's met a man!" Elliot sang as he danced over to her, grabbing both her hands and trying to drag her into his happy dance.

"Did you actually just kick up your heels?" she asked, refusing to join in.

"YES." Elliot admitted happily. "OH honey, I've been waiting for this for_ever_."

"What are you talking about?" she asked defensively, her voice surly. "I've dated."

"No my dear; you have accepted invitations from various men of sundry caliber –"

"Don't you mean 'sundry men of various caliber'?"

"I mean horny men of dubious character! Whatever-over the course of the years you have NEVER been so taken with a fella that you've not only asked him out but you've given up an opportunity like seeing DM&B at the Grand Stand. You can act all coy and cool if you want, Ms. Banks but you don't fool me. THIS IS BIG."

"Well, it can't be too big; he's only in town until Monday." Marla sank into a mid century modern leather upholstered arm chair.

"Ohhh. " Elliot nodded his head with a lascivious smirk. "So it's to be a one nighter, eh? That's not really your style, Honey. That's…my style. Wait. If you're looking for a hot hookup, why do you want all four tickets? Am I finally seeing your hidden, kinky, dirty side?" he clapped his hands. "Oh, _Marla_!"

"NO!" Marla stood and walked toward the bathroom down the hallway. "It's not like that _at all._"

"Well, tell me what's it's like or no deal." Elliot dropped elegantly into the other armchair, crossing his ankles and calling after her as she headed toward the powder room. "Believe me, sweetie; I want to give you my tickets. I want whatever little scheme you've cooked up to work. I haven't seen you this excited about spending time with a man in…ever. But you know the drill; no details, no deal. Who is he, how'd you meet him?"

Marla ignored him and went into the little bath off the hallway. Noticing that there was no paper on the spindle, she sighed and headed toward the bedroom with its master bath.

"Elliot," she called out as she headed toward his room, "You're out of toilet paper again!"

"Oh, sorry." He called, then suddenly sprung up out of his chair, charging down the hall after her. "WAIT. STOP!"

He caught up to Marla, standing in the door of his bedroom, staring in disbelief at the unforgettably ugly comforter on his bed. Elliot groaned.

"Is that a new bed spread?" Marla softly asked, turning her head and fixing her stare at him.

"What, that old thing? I've had it for years." Elliot said, nonchalantly.

"It's…not exactly your style." Marla looked again at the puffy down comforter in its green duvet covered in pink roses. The rest of the room was shades of gray, dark red and chrome.

"I've been thinking about redecorating." Elliot insisted, unconvincingly.

"Taking decorating tips from Grandma?"

"Maybe I'm ready for a change."

"You took that from the stagers." Marla quietly accused.

"I didn't take it! I paid for it."

"With Logan's money?"

"No." Elliot said, morally outraged. "I told them what he said and gave them the money and they were happy to let me take it."

"Did you at least have it cleaned?"

"Um…"

"ELLIOT."

"That would sort of defeat the whole purpose, wouldn't it?" he pointed out.

"You're sick."

"Yeah, but I'm not a thief."

"We'll talk when I get out but you are going to give me those tickets." She said, marching into his bathroom.

"Like we both didn't know that the second you asked for them." He muttered, stomping back to the living room.

* * *

"Boy, this is even more embarrassing now than I thought it would be." Marla said, sheepishly when she returned and picked up her glass of wine.

"Really, Marla?" Elliot asked dryly, glancing pointedly toward his bedroom. "_Really?"_

"Oh, Darling," Marla chuckled. "You have got to stop letting your dick lead you around by the nose."

"No way." Elliot tossed off his wine. "It's the only part of me that always knows what it wants."

"He's unavailable in every way a guy possibly can be." She gently pointed out.

"That's the fun of an unattainable crush!" Elliot said, happily pouring himself another glass. "No pressure!"

"Well, if you thinks he's dreamy…" she took a sip of her wine and grinned at her friend. "…he's got nothing on his Dad."

"His what?" Elliot lowered his glass and stared at her.

"His name is Keith Mars and he's—"

"OH. MY. GOD." Elliot sprang to his feet. "You've got the hots for Logan's DAD?"

Marla cackled at the ridiculousness of the situation.

"This is _interesting_." Elliot paced the room. "This is new territory. We've never had a father/son crush before."

"Don't make this creepy, please."

Elliot waved her statement away as though it were a mosquito and sat back down facing her, excitement all over his face. "How'd you meet him? What's he like? Is he as scrumptious as his offspring?"

"MORE." Marla sat up and leaned toward him. "I met him this morning at the house. He's flying back to the coast Monday. He's smart and funny and charming and as for attractive? His son isn't even in his league!"

"I highly doubt that." Elliot said, offended. "Just because you're too old for him doesn't mean—"

"Seriously, Elliot! Someday, when he's actually old enough to shave, Logan might be as hot as his dad, but right now? No contest!"

"He can shave!" Elliot said. "I'm… pretty sure."

"You sure went from having a Daddy complex to being a dirty old man in record time. Anyway, I'm not willing to wait and see how the boy does. Not when his dad is already there, grown up and everything."

"So if I understand you;" Elliot raised an eyebrow over the rim of his glass, "you want the delectable Mr. Mars to be your guest at Marcia Ball's concert at the Zoo and you think your chances for success are better if you can invite the ménage a troi?"

"Well, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't consider it without the kids."

"No…if I came to town to see my son for the weekend, I wouldn't bail on him for a date." Elliot agreed with a sigh. "Especially if he were Logan."

"Do you have any idea how demented you sound?"

"Oh Doll, I never listen to myself."

"May be you should."

"What, here? In the privacy of my own home? With you?"

"You're right. Sorry. I don't know what I was thinking." Marla tossed back her wine.

"It's a devious plan." Elliot lifted the bottle and offered her more. "I think it'll work. Make the call."

Marla put her glass down and pulled out her cell.

"I can't believe you get to go on a date with Logan and his adorable Veronica." Elliot said, sadly.

"It's all about his dad. They're just tagging along." She pointed out, looking up Veronica's number. "Is Brick the jealous type? Does he know about your unattainable crush?"

"Better a crush on a straight, married man than to be tempted by every slab of beef to come down the road."

"Oh, well...much better if you put it that way."

"I put it any way they let me." Elliot chortled.

"Stop being gross." Marla admonished as she hit Veronica's number in her phone book. "Wish me luck!"

To be continued...


	25. Chapter 25 Caught in the Rain

Chapter 25 Caught in the Rain

"…you just learn to recognize when people are lying to you," Keith said to Logan as they waited for their dinner at the Tin Fish. "It's a sense you develop, I guess. The trick is to figure out why they're lying; they're not always guilty of the crime you're investigating…" he looked up and saw the younger man's eyes slide past him and he could tell from the look on Logan's face that Veronica was returning to their table. Intercepting the way this young man and his daughter looked at each other had felt like an invasion of privacy for years but now that they were married, Keith was allowing himself to get used to it. He glanced over his shoulder and sure enough, Veronica was there.

She slid back into her chair at the table by the lake just as their meal was served.

"Hey, Dad. Are you familiar with Marcia Ball?" She asked, hooking an onion ring out of the basket with a finger and taking a bite.

"Of course. So are you." Keith said, picking up his fish sandwich. "'Luella'? 'Let the Tears Roll Down'?"

"Oh, that's her? Have you ever seen her in concert?"

"Once. God, she puts on a spectacular show!" Keith turned to Logan. "She's this tall, slim, southern brunette who plays the piano with her entire body."

"What, like with her feet?" Logan raised an eyebrow.

"NO, I don't mean literally; I mean she throws herself into it as though playing were an athletic event." Keith explained. "I've never seen a performer enjoy the stage more than she does." He looked at his daughter, who never asked pointless questions. "Why?"

"She's playing at the Amphitheater at the Minnesota Zoo tomorrow night and we're going!"

"WHAT?" Keith almost dropped his dinner. Logan chuckled.

"That was Marla on the phone," Veronica said, excitedly. "She and Elliot have subscriptions to the concerts there and Elliot had to bail, so there she was with three extras and she immediately thought of the three of us. Isn't that great?"

"That is great." Keith nodded, avoiding Logan's eye.

"I'm gonna run up and get some more ketchup," Veronica said. "Anyone want anything? Another beer?"

"I'm ready for another." Her dad said, unable to keep the grin off his face.

"Me, too." Logan nodded.

Veronica stood and walked up to the window. Logan looked at Keith, his face a bland mask but for his eyes, which danced with glee.

"So, I guess she likes jazz." He said, downing the last of his beer.

"Not a word out of you." Keith tried to make his voice stern but he was nodding like an extraordinarily happy bobble head.

"And three extra tickets! Hmmm." Logan mused. "How fortuitous. Serendipitous, even."

"Who's Elliot?" Keith asked, a crease suddenly marring his face.

"Her partner." Logan said with a smirk. "He's fabulous."

"Ah." Keith smiled again as Veronica returned with ketchup and beer.

* * *

Sunday morning, Logan and Keith got up early for a round a golf before Veronica even peeled herself out of bed.

She sent JR away and had a big brunch ready for them herself when they returned. They ate in the kitchen since the temperatures were already in the nineties by the time they came back from the course. During the heat of the day, Keith read Logan's first draft, which he liked as much as Veronica did.

The three of them spent several hours in the library, discussing the unfolding of cases that Keith and Veronica had worked and the dramatic ways in which such stories could be told. Both the Mars were impressed with Logan's thoughts and ideas on the topic; how different authors and directors had handled them; the doling out of clues, the importance of point of view and how much to let the reader or audience know and when and how.

Keith was frankly blown away not only by the quality of the writing in the chapters that Logan had already produced but by the depth of the kid's knowledge of the genre in both literature and cinema.

Veronica laughed out loud when she caught the look on her dad's face. "Scary, isn't it?" she said. "I told you! But it's not just that he reads everything and sees everything; it's that he remembers all of it!"

"My memory's nowhere near as good as yours." Logan said, blinking in surprise.

"You've always been good at connecting the dots, too." Veronica went on, remembering a long ago case. "You figured out who stole your Mom's credit cards before I did."

"Only because you wasted so much time barking up the wrong tree. I was able to clear your prime suspect immediately." Logan dismissed her admiration of his skills with a shrug and turned to the sheriff. "My head's just full of usless trivia, is all."

"Not so useless, apparently." Keith corrected him. "You've clearly developed some definite ideas for how to do this."

"It's story telling." Logan shrugged. "Been doing that my whole life."

"So have I," Veronica said, nodding toward his manuscript. "But I can't do this. You might as well admit it; you have talent."

"And here I was; resigned to getting by on looks alone." Logan smirked.

"Good way to starve to death." Keith snorted.

"Aw, who's prettier than he is?" Veronica asked her dad.

"Seems to me, a pretty face trumps all the talent in the world these days." Logan said, cynically.

"Well then it's a good thing you're rich!" Keith laughed.

"It is, isn't it?" Logan grinned.

"I think you're beautiful." Veronica leaned in and kissed her husband.

"Hey. Stop it." Keith objected. "Get a room."

"We got a whole house, Dad." She reminded him.

"Should I repair to my room?" He asked. "Do you two need to be alone?"

"NO." Logan looked horrified. "Ronnie! Not in front of the parental unit! Jeez."

"See that, Dad?" Veronica nodded toward Logan. "He's pretty _and _circumspect. How lucky am I?"

"He's kind of a prude, isn't he?" Keith said in an undervoice.

"Oh, that's it." Logan sighed. It had taken him a few years to get used to the way these two teased each other but he was onto them now. He grabbed his wife and pulled her onto his lap, kissing her soundly. Having rendered her breathless, he looked up at Keith and said "You want to watch, Sheriff? You might learn a few things."

"NO." Keith stood up in alarm.

"Then get out, both of you." Logan said, placing Veronica on her feet in front of him, where she made a soft noise of disappointment. "The pretty might come easy but the writing takes work."

* * *

Logan stayed in the library and worked while Veronica took her dad upstairs to show him the huge closet she'd converted into a photo studio. She had already covered a section of the wall with prints. Keith especially liked the ones she's made of her friends at Minnehaha falls the week before. He watched while she loaded the card from the night before into her computer and pulled up the images of himself and Logan at Lake Calhoun, the sunset painting the sky in blazing colors behind them. He couldn't decide what he liked best; the photos themselves or her obvious excitement at having rediscovered her love of photography and the fun she was having.

Later in the afternoon, the three of them pulled the new canoe on its ultra light trailer over to the beach and Keith and Veronica took the boat out while Logan swam. In the middle of the lake, Keith abandoned ship and swam to shore just to make Veronica paddle herself back to the beach. She tried to cajole her husband into swimming to her rescue but that cold hearted brat just laughed at her from his comfortable spot on the sand and she finally had to pick up her oar and get herself back to shore.

"I can't believe you two." She growled as she dragged the boat up onto the sand.

"I thought it was high time you exerted yourself." Keith laughed. "You were making me do all the work out there."

"And you." She glared at Logan. "You're supposed to cherish me."

"I do!" He laughed. "I will cherish the image of you paddling yourself to shore for the rest of my days!"

"Some knight in shining armor you are." She thrust the oar at him.

"Do you know what kind of damage water does to armor?" he asked, dragging the canoe back up onto the trailer. "Squeaks…rust…I'm telling you; there's not enough armor polish in the world."

"Since when do you need rescuing?" Keith asked. "What happened to the girl who can do anything?"

"Just because I _can_ do anything doesn't mean I _want_ to do it." She shrugged, looking at the palms of her hands. "I almost got a blister."

"Just because you don't want to doesn't mean you shouldn't do it anyway." Her Dad threw his arm around her neck.

"You almost capsized me when you jumped." She said, trying unsuccessfully to suppress her smile.

"Hey, tomorrow I want to try your sail board." Keith looked at Logan. "It doesn't look as hard as… you know; surfing."

"You sure? I mean…you're kind of old." Logan teased him. "Ronnie will kill me if you get hurt."

"He'll be fine." She said, callously.

"I'm not completely decrepit." Keith protested. "Anyway, there's something to hang onto, right? And I'll wear a life jacket."

"Oh my God." Logan groaned at the mental image this conjured up. Veronica just giggled and reminded them that they were expecting Marla for dinner soon, so they'd best be getting back to the house and into some clothes.

* * *

Bryn was in the kitchen, cutting fresh fruit into a bowl. JR had been slow grilling several racks of ribs all afternoon. A pot of peeled potatoes was waiting to be made into Bryn's Mom's famous fresh potato salad.

"Folk tales are more than just stories or even morality tales," she was explaining to JR. "They not only helped our ancestors understand and explain the natural world around them, the stories were a way to teach their kids how to get by; in the original tale of Red Riding Hood, the wolf ate her, you know."

"Thereby teaching them not to play with wolves?" JR asked, beginning to chop potatoes. "Medieval kids were stupid."

"All kids start out stupid. Well, maybe not stupid; just naïve and trusting. Cut those a little bit smaller please. Bite size. That's not bite size. Not everyone has a mouth as big as yours."

"My, Grand ma, what a huge yap you have." JR cut the potato smaller.

"Kids need to be taught that the world and more specifically; the people in it can be dangerous." Bryn pointed out.

"So…don't talk to strangers."

"That's right. And sometimes the danger can come from someone who looks like a family member. Do you know what the leading cause of death is for little kids in _this_ country, in _this_ century?"

"Their mother's boyfriends." JR was up on his crime statistics.

"Exactly! Disney did the world a great disservice by cleaning up Folk tales. In the original Cinderella, she made her mother and step sisters dance at her wedding; in red hot iron shoes."

"Payback_ is_ a bitch." JR winced.

"Some folk tales just helped people explain day to day tragedies." Bryn went on. "For instance, hundreds of years ago, people had no explanation for things like birth defects; a baby born with spina bifida, hydrocephaly, anencephaly, even a cleft palate was explained away with the tale of the changeling."

"The changeling?"

"Fairies were notorious for stealing newborns and replacing them with ugly fairy creatures known as changelings."

"Ew. What happened to those kids?"

"What do you think? A typical remedy was for Dad to take the baby out on his way to the fields in the morning, dig a shallow grave, leave the kid there to die of exposure and fill in the grave on his way home from work. Assuming the fairies didn't take the thing back."

"The fairies?"

"Or predators."

"Oh shit." JR slammed the knife down and looked at her in dismay.

"It's a cruel world." Bryn shrugged. "Changelings weren't the only infants to suffer that fate. Unwanted babies didn't always get left in a basket on the steps of the church. You think there's anything new under the sun?"

"I keep hoping."

"Well, not all folk tales are to cover up such bloody mindedness. Take the Selkies, for instance. Without some sort of explanation for the occasional black haired, brown eyed Irishman, just think of the numbers of women who would've been turned out by their husbands for infidelity or burned as witches!"

"Doing it with seals didn't count as cheating? What about dolphins? You get a freebie there, too?"

"The Selkie line could easily have been in her or her husband's genetic makeup. Every once in a while, a dark one pops out. It works both ways, you know; my Dad is black Irish. He looks just like Grandpa but Gramps is blue eyed and freckled. Imagine me with blue eyes and red hair and you've got my cousin Ellie."

"I'd like to meet her."

"Hunh. We'll see." Bryn put down her knife and wiped her hands on a towel.

"Genetics is an imprecise science," JR commented as the door bell rang.

* * *

Marla held her breath while waiting for the bell to be answered. She exhaled when the door swung inward.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," she blurted out at the pretty, dark haired girl standing at the open door."Who are you?"

"I'm Bryn!" the girl said, a huge smile spreading across her face. "You must be Marla!"

"BRYN." JR said, coming up behind her. "Get back in the kitchen where you belong! Answering the door is MY job!"

"Don't order me around, I don't even work here!" Bryn snapped back at him. "He thinks he's in charge," she said to Marla, "but he's not the boss of anyone."

"Go on!" he shooed her toward the kitchen. "I am the only one around here who gives a crap about proper procedure." He turned to Marla, who looked bemused. "Let's try again, shall we?"

She opened her mouth but nothing came out as the door swung shut in her face. She bit back a laugh and reached up to ring again. The door instantly swung open.

"Ms. Banks, good evening!" JR said and stepped aside. "The family is still above stairs but you'll find iced tea and margaritas on the back patio."

"Ooh. 'Above stairs'." Marla nodded, impressed. "Have you been watching Masterpiece Theater?"

"Nope; reading P.G. Wodehouse. I feel an affinity with Jeeves." JR said, leading her through the living room to the sunroom.

"But your employer isn't a featherheaded nincompoop." Marla pointed out.

"Imagine what Jeeves could have accomplished had he worked for Admiral Moneybags!" JR mused.

"Admiral Moneybags?" Marla's eyebrow quirked up. "Does Logan know you call him that?"

"He's the one who insisted I promote him from 'Captain'." JR held open the sunroom door to the patio. He drew a chair for her at the table beneath the shade of a colorful umbrella and poured her a margarita.

"I'm not sure I should be drinking this," Marla said. "I'm driving."

"Actually, I think Logan's planning on taking the Range Rover." JR said, going to the grill to brush barbecue sauce onto the meat. "You can just leave your car out front and drink up."

"Oh, lovely!"

JR went back into the kitchen, leaving Marla to enjoy the early evening sunshine as it slanted through the trees at the back of the yard.

After a few moments, Marla decided it couldn't hurt to freshen up and check her hair and makeup before anyone (no one in particular) joined her on the patio. Being intimately familiar with the layout of the house, she went back in through the sun room and turned right to the powder room she knew lay behind the main stairs, between the kitchen and sunroom.

Bryn, having finished with the fruit, had moved on to cutting onions and celery into the potato salad.

"Genetics is an imprecise science," She agreed with JR's last statement when he came back in from the grill. "If it weren't for latent genes and spontaneous mutations, we'd all look pretty much alike by now."

"I do look a lot like my Uncle Morrie."

"Most of us resemble family members but not everyone. Look at Logan. Considering his parents, he should be the best looking guy ever born and he's not."

"Moneybags isn't exactly Quasimodo." JR pointed out as he piled silverware onto a tray for outside.

"No, not at all!" Bryn agreed as she chopped green onions. "He's perfectly nice looking but you have to admit; he's not in his father's league."

In the powder room, Marla was touching up her lip color. She had been aware of the murmur of voices coming from the kitchen but hadn't paid any attention until Bryn's last statement caught her ear.

"Well, that's not even a fair comparison." JR's voice carried through the wall.

"But that's my point!" Bryn said. "His mother was phenomenally beautiful, so theoretically, Logan should be _better_ looking than his dad."

Marla frowned into the mirror, listening._ Bryn prefers Keith to Logan, too?_

"Plenty of girls think Logan's as hot as his dad, believe me." JR said.

"Well, we do tend to fall for charm and personality as much as chiseled features and hyper virility."

_Chiseled features is right but there's nothing hyper about his virility! _Marla renewed her efforts at touching up her face, pulling her mascara wand out of her purse. _And I thought he was perfectly charming. This is no time to pull punches. Phenomenally beautiful. Huh._

"Charm and personality?" JR laughed. "Then why haven't I been beating them off with a stick?"

"You're not that charming." Bryn shrugged.

"Hey, I got you here, didn't I?"

"I tend to fall for dorky and awkward."

"Lucky me!" JR laughed as he went back out the door to check on the ribs again.

Marla tossed her mascara into her purse, gave herself a satisfied look in the mirror and went into the kitchen.

"Lucky I'm not swooning at the feet of your boss or his dad?" Bryn chortled, hearing footsteps behind her. She spun around and her face transformed into a mask of acute embarrassment as she saw Marla. "Oh! I...I thought you were JR." Bryn stammered.

"No, just me." Marla laughed at the younger girl's obvious discomfort. "Hey, don't be embarrassed; I happen to agree with you!"

"You agree with me?" Bryn asked, confused.

"Well, I may have outgrown falling for dorky and awkward but I'm absolutely with you about Logan's dad."

"Oh." Bryn still looked deeply mortified. "You…you know about Logan's dad?"

"Oh sure. Yesterday." Marla waved away Bryn's embarrassment. "Maybe it's just me but while Logan's not _un_attractive, his dad is…_whoof_!"

"Oh," Bryn laughed, relieved. "It's not just you! He's like, proof that there's such a thing as too sexy!"

"I can't believe you think so, too." Marla admitted.

"Please! He may be before my time but looks like that are hard to argue with. Any female who says otherwise is prepubescent or lying."

"No." Marla shook her head. "Not all women find a man like him attractive."

"You're probably right." Bryn sighed and turned back to the potato salad. "Good thing too. After all, we can't all have an international sex symbol with perfect teeth and perfect hair."

"I actually find perfect hair off putting. I like a guy who doesn't care how he looks."

"You do?" Bryn asked.

"Of course!" Marla said. "That natural, easy going confidence is a big part of what makes Logan's dad so attractive."

"I guess that's the real trick, isn't it? I mean, it probably took his stylist hours to pull it all together, but he did manage it, didn't he?"

"What?" Marla frowned in confusion. Just then, JR came back in from the patio.

"Oh, there you are!" he said when he saw Marla. "I thought we'd lost you. Your margarita is melting." He turned to Bryn. "Are you trying to make our guest help with dinner prep?"

"We're in the middle of a conversation here!" Bryn told him.

"Ooh. 'Bout what?" he asked.

"Girl stuff."

"You're talking about me, aren't you?" JR looked suspiciously at both of them.

"We're comparing the appeal of earnest dork to action hero." Bryn confirmed.

"I probably should get back outside," Marla said. "Unless you could use my help with that…"

"NO." JR ushered her toward the door. "Everyone not getting paid to be in the kitchen; _out_!"

With a shrug, Bryn hopped off her stool and followed Marla to the back door.

"Is the potato salad finished?" he asked. "Where are you going?"

"I'm not getting paid to be in here." She pointed out.

"I didn't mean you. You can stay."

"The potato salad is finished and I don't want to get in your way," she said sweetly as she went out the door.

"OH." His shoulders slumped. "Would you set the table while you're out there? Please?"

"Since you said 'please'…" she smiled over her shoulder at him as the door swung shut behind her.

Marla returned to her chair in the shade of the umbrella and picked up her drink. Bryn came out and began unloading the tray of plates, napkins and flatware.

"That boy really needs an assistant to boss around." She said as she began to set the table.

"He's awfully cute." Marla smirked.

"He is." Bryn grinned as she quickly dealt out the place settings. "Movie idols are fine for fantasies but in real life, I'll take the cute dorky ones every time." Marla nodded as she sipped her drink. Bryn continued to work, swiftly dealing out napkins and setting the flatware on top. "In real life, how often do you find yourself in need of an action hero? So, Moneybags didn't inherit his dad's looks. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? And who wants to see the face of an accused murderer in the mirror every morning?"

"What?" Marla set her drink on the table and looked curiously at Bryn as she finished setting the table.

"There's no way in the world that homicidal maniac would've gotten away with it if he weren't the Sexiest Man Alive." Bryn went on as she looked critically at the table and said "What we need here is some flowers."

She turned and went back into the house without noticing the effect her words had had on Marla. The older woman was sitting still as a stone, staring slack jawed after Bryn. Outwardly, she looked no different than she had a moment before but inside she was screaming.

_What? WHAT? Homicidal maniac? Murder? Homicidal WHAT? OH. MY. __**GAHD!**_

She had no idea how long she sat, frozen, staring blindly into space as her mind reeled when suddenly the door to the sunroom burst open, startling her and causing her to jump so that she nearly knocked over her margarita. Her head spun around to see Logan striding cheerfully toward her.

_Not the face of a homicidal maniac._

"Marla!" he cried, spreading his arms wide in welcome. "Sorry to keep you waiting,"

"Oh." She was surprised to hear herself squeak.

"Look;" he said, spinning around like a fashion model. "I'm wearing a shirt. Veronica and the Sheriff will be down in a minute." He dropped into a chair beside her and picked up the pitcher of margaritas. "I see JR took good care of you, at least." He said as he poured himself a drink. "Those ribs smell great, I hope you're hungry."

"Uh," she stared at him as the words he spoke slowly sank into her consciousness. _Veronica and the Sheriff?_

_Sheriff?_

Before Logan could notice her bizarre behavior, the kitchen door swung open again and her head snapped around to see Veronica and Keith come through it, looking at each other and laughing. Their profiles were mirror images.

"_My Dad was the Sheriff when I was a kid." _She remembered Veronica saying on their way to Indian Hills for their first estate sale.

"He's a P.I. now!" she blurted, her voice a high pitched squeak.

"That's right." Logan nodded. "Everyone in town still calls him Sheriff. Habit, I guess."

"_His parents…died and his house burned down while we were still in high school." _Veronica's voice echoed through Marla's memory as she snapped her head around a third time to stare gape mouthed at Logan.

_Homicidal maniac. Dead parents. Not Keith. _

"Keith is _Veronica's dad!_" she said, stupidly as relief flooded her body. She picked up her margarita and took a long swig.

"Yes." Logan looked curiously at her as he sipped his margarita. He frowned at the glass.

"Marla!" Veronica greeted her. "Sorry we took so long. Dad went all girly on me and couldn't decide on a shirt. I think he looks grand."

"Veronica stop; you're making me blush." Keith smiled as he sat in the chair beside Marla, who was staring at him with an odd look on her face. "I look okay." He said self deprecatingly.

"You look _great." _Marla gushed. "_Sheriff!" _and then she started to laugh, hysterically.

"Take this," Logan handed Veronica his margarita. "I always forget how much I hate these. Is there any beer out here?" he looked up as Bryn returned, bearing a vase of cut flowers for the center of the table.

* * *

By the time Bryn had set out the flowers and provided Logan and Keith with bottles, Marla had managed to get herself under control and soon JR was serving the ribs.

Shortly before seven o'clock, they arrived at the Minnesota Zoo. The Zoo was in Apple Valley, a third ring suburb south of town. The Minnesota Zoo was patterned after the San Diego zoo in that the animal exhibits were designed to mimic the natural habitats of the wildlife. No cages for animals here; the monkeys had large play areas with plenty of climbing opportunity and the big cats paddocks were so heavily forested that you could wait for days and never catch a glimpse of the tigers. To lure tourists to a zoo in which the possibility of seeing no animals at all was very real, the zoo had added attractions; an Imax theater and one of the nicest, most intimate amphitheaters for live shows in the state. All summer long,the Minnesota Zoo hosted such performers as Marcia Ball, Pat Green, Delbert McClinton and Crowded House.

The amphitheater was located about a third of a mile from the parking lot. Wide gravel paths lead beneath a canopy of trees, past ponds and streams into the woods where the theater itself offered a gorgeous setting for a concert with the woods surrounding it and a lake behind the stage.

The place was small, only holding a few hundred fans but a wonderful venue; no obstructed seats and room for dancing. Seating for most shows was first come, first served but since the entire place was right on top of the stage, there were no bad seats. Beer, wine and cocktails were available at the concession stand.

Logan had looked up directions to the zoo before dinner and so Marla was easily talked into leaving her car at the Mars' house and they all rode out in the Range Rover. Veronica had intended to climb into the back with her so that her dad could sit in front with Logan, but Keith had hopped into the back beside Marla before Veronica could act.

It was a hot but very beautiful evening as they joined the crowd walking through the woods to the amphitheater. Keith stopped at the stand and bought a round of drinks and they went down the steps into the rows of bench seating. It was already crowded but they found room on an aisle near the top.

"This is great." Veronica said, looking around. "It's so small!"

"I know," Marla nodded. "This is my favorite venue. Not only is the setting gorgeous but it's so small it's like having a concert in your back yard."

"Actually, when you do that, the logistics are a nightmare, so this is actually better." Logan commented as he looked around. "Plus, you don't have to live with the mess afterwards."

Marla looked at Logan, curious about this wealthy young man she really didn't know at all but before she had a chance to wonder who may have performed in his back yard, Keith said "Anyone familiar with Cowboy Mouth?"

"Is that the opening act?" Veronica said, pulling out her phone.

"They're a country/rock band out of New Orleans," Marla said. "That's all I know."

"If the Neville brothers and the Clash had a baby, it would be Cowboy Mouth." Veronica read off her phone.

"Did you Google them?" Logan asked.

"Nah, I Pizzed them; it's quicker." She flashed him her phone.

"Piz should write a book." Keith said, shaking his head in admiration for the extent of the kid's knowledge of the music world.

"Chuck Klosterman already did." Logan told him.

"According to their website," Marla read, "On a bad night, Cowboy Mouth will tear the roof off the joint and on a good night, they'll save your soul. Sounds good to me!"

"Me too." Logan downed his beer. "My soul can use all the saving it can get."

* * *

There was no roof on the amphitheater but the New Orleans based band whose shorts clad drummer was also the lead singer rocked the zoo. By the time they finished their set and the sun had gone down, the crowd was happy, sweaty, a little bit drunk and more than ready to stomp to Marcia Ball.

When the tall, slim southern lady finally took her seat at the keyboards and thanked the crowd for coming out to see her, they roared their approval and she set to work.

Marla and Keith swayed and danced in their seats but Logan grabbed Veronica by the hand and pulled her down to the narrow strip of concrete in front of the stage to really dance. They weren't alone; a half dozen couples were there, along with a handful of women, dancing by themselves. Lynne had made sure that Trina and Logan could dance long before they hit adolescence, believing (correctly in the case of those two) that social knowledge was social power.

After three numbers, Veronica was grateful for a slow song. She rested her head against Logan's chest and tightened her arms around his neck. She smiled contentedly as she felt his hands on her back, his arms holding her tightly.

"Do you remember the first time we ever slow danced?" she murmured.

"Of course I do," his voice was intimate, drifting down into her ear. "The memory still occasionally wakes me up in a cold sweat."

"It's not a good memory?" She frowned but didn't lift her head away from the sound of his heartbeat.

"Good? " He scoffed. "Do _you_ remember our first slow dance?"

"Of course I do! Senior year; spring dance. I pulled you away from the ticket table to rescue Gia Goodman from whatever horrible thing you were about to say to her."

"God, she was an annoying girl. I think she was afraid that if she couldn't hear the sound of her own voice, she'd cease to exist."

"Gia was okay, deep down. Is that why our first dance gives you night terrors?"

"No." She smiled at the feel of his chuckle against her cheek. "You really are clueless, aren't you?"

"Did you hate me that much?" she teased him. "Dancing with me was torture?"

"I've done more than dance with girls I hated." He said dryly as his arms tightened around her. "It was torture because I loved you that much. You dragged me onto that floor and all I could think was 'don't do this to me'. You were close enough to smell and it almost killed me. Then you put your arms around me and I thought 'don't do this to me'. I held my breath until it hurt and when I put my hands on your waist all I wanted to do was kiss you until you loved me again and I just kept thinking 'don't do this to me'."

"Do you really think I would've dragged you out onto that dance floor if I hadn't wanted you to kiss me? Talk about clueless."

"Cruel, wicked girl."

"Silly, stupid boy."

"Well, I wasn't exactly up to reading between the lines that night. I was concentrating on not having a hideously embarrassing condition on the dance floor."

"Can you read between the lines tonight?" she lifted her head and smiled demurely at him.

"Don't do this to me." He groaned.

* * *

"Is that rain?" Marla looked up to see that the stars had all disappeared while they danced. Before Keith could even answer her question, a flash of lightening was quickly followed by a boom of thunder. Despite the canopy over the stage, the band halted due to the safety considerations of playing electrical instruments in a lightning storm. The musicians retreated to the safety of the dressing rooms while the fans huddled in their seats, waiting to see if the storm would pass quickly but the light sprinkle Marla had first noticed quickly became a steady rain, followed by more flashes of lightning and louder, closer thunderclaps. Someone must have checked the weather maps because less than ten minutes after the music stopped, it was announced that the remainder of the concert was cancelled due to the weather and the fans were urged to get out of the rain immediately.

"Well, I guess that's that." Marla said, pushing her wet hair off her forehead and looking sadly at Keith. "I'm really sorry."

"Don't be." Keith said with a smile. "This was a really great time."

"Personally, I think Cowboy Mouth was worth the price of admission." Logan agreed.

"Hey, we sang, we danced, who's complaining?" Veronica said as they joined the crowd as it moved toward the top and back of the amphitheater. "Let's get back to the car."

"I really wanted to dance." Marla said, as they walked back on the dark wooded path toward the parking lot. "It looked like you two were having so much fun."

"I didn't know you liked to dance," Keith said. "We could have danced; I'm a great dancer."

"Really? So many men won't even try." Marla said.

"Oh, Dad's good." Veronica assured her. "He can cut a rug to _bits_."

"You're quite a dancer, Logan." Marla said, turning to him. "Most guys your age are way too self conscious to get out on the dance floor but you look very comfortable out there."

"Self conscious?" Veronica laughed. "In high school, he was comfortable on stage in his tighty-whities ala Risky Business."

"Really?" Marla looked delighted.

"What are you talking about?" Logan asked, frowning at his wife.

"Junior year, 80's dance; he was Tom Cruise, button down shirt, jockey briefs, sunglasses and all." Veronica said.

"I don't remember that." Logan shook his head.

"You threatened to kick the ass of anyone who didn't wang chung." Veronica reminded him.

"I don't think that was me." Logan insisted.

"It sounds like you." Keith couldn't help but pointing out.

"If Trina hadn't shown up to take you home, Leo was going to arrest you." Veronica reminisced.

"That could have been any dance." Logan admitted. He turned to Veronica. "What was Leo doing at a high school dance?"

"Yeah, what was Leo doing there?" Keith asked.

"He was…kinda my date." Veronica said. "It would have been our first date but then _you_ happened…"

"Ah, yes. That rings a faint bell." Logan grinned. "I was pissed."

"What you were was shit faced." Veroncia corrected him.

"No, I was pissed cuz I thought you were with Leo." Logan insisted.

"Leo and I went out about three times and then you happened _again_…"

"Yeah, that part I really remember." Logan grabbed Veronica's ass but her answer was lost in a deafening clap of thunder as the clouds burst over them and the steady light rain suddenly became a downpour.

"Oh, nice." Marla said.

"Yikes." Logan grabbed Veronica by the hand and pulled her into a run down the dark path.

"You don't want to run, do you?" Keith asked Marla as rivulets coursed down his face.

"In these shoes? I don't think so." Marla answered. "It's a quarter mile to the car. We're going to be soaked no matter what, I don't see the allure in twisting our ankles while we do it."

"It's a warm rain, anyway." Keith said, offering her his arm.

* * *

Logan and Veronica arrived at the Range Rover which was parked at the far end of the dark lot, soaked to the skin. Logan unlocked the rig and Veronica scrambled into the front seat.

"Turn on the heat, I'm freezing!" she shivered, pushing dripping hair off her forehead. "The t-temperature must have dropped fifteen degrees in t-ten minutes."

"Hang on," Logan said after a glance at his shivering wife. "My beach bag is in back, I might have something dry for you to put on."

Before she could protest, he was out in the deluge and the back of the car opened up. Climbing into the cargo area, Logan located his bag and pulled out a towel and dry t-shirt, which he tossed to Veronica.

"Take off your wet clothes and dry off." He ordered.

"What, _here_?" she picked up the towel and began to dry her hair.

"No one's around." Logan looked out the back end at the dark parking lot. "Visibility is about ten feet. You'll catch pneumonia in those clothes. Hurry up, before your dad gets here."

"What about you?" Veronica demanded as she quickly peeled off her wet clothes. "I don't want you to c-catch cold."

"Um…" Logan continued to root through his bag. "I'll put on these." In a flash, he'd peeled off his own wet clothes and was thrashing around in the cargo hold, struggling with a pair of compression shorts he'd found in his beach bag. Veronica, now naked and giggling wildly, tossed the beach towel to her naked husband.

"Hurry!" she chortled as she pulled Logan's enormous t-shirt over her still damp head. She sighed as the warm of the car's heater finally hit her now dry skin.

"I'm hurrying!" Logan said, lying on his back in the cargo bay, trying to kick his damp legs into the compression shorts. "Do you really think I want the Sheriff to catch me like this?" He got on his knees, pulling the shorts up his thighs. Veronica shrieked at the sight of him kneeling in the back of the car, naked but for the strip of spandex binding his thighs. He was laughing so hard his wet hands kept slipping off the shorts but he finally yanked them up over his hips. To avoid going back out into the rain, he pulled the cargo door closed and salmoned into the back seat, then over the front seat into Veronica's lap.

That's where they were, laughing hysterically when Keith and Marla arrived a minute later, looking as dignified as two drowned cats.

"What's so funny?" Keith inquired as he slid into the back seat next to Marla.

"What—what took you so long?" Veronica gasped, tossing the now damp towel back to them.

"Where's Logan?" Marla frowned, using the towel to pat her face dry.

"I'm here." He popped up in the driver's seat.

"What happened to your shirt?" Keith demanded. Logan had given Veronica the only shirt in the bag.

"Nothin'." Logan looked at his father in law in the rear view mirror.

"I should have known you couldn't go an entire evening fully dressed." Marla observed dryly. "Please tell me you're wearing _something_."

"And what are you wearing?" Keith finally noticed that his daughter wasn't wearing the clothes he'd last seen her in, either.

"Chill Dad," Veronica shrugged. "We're married now; we can do whatever we want on a date."

"Not on a date with me!" Keith protested. "You were only five minutes ahead of us!"

"Face it old man, we're a lot younger and quicker than you." Logan muttered, giggling and picking up the cell phone he'd brought from the cargo space.

"I did _not_ hear that." Keith insisted as Marla began to giggle too.

"We're all here." Veronica punched Logan. "Let's go."

"Just a second," Logan finished texting. "Where are my shoes?"

* * *

Back in his apartment, JR and Bryn were watching a movie when he got Logan's text. He read it, frowning.

"Would you pause it for a minute?" he asked. "Moneybags needs me to do something."

"Sure." Bryn hit the button and watched in silence as he headed for the door. "What are you doing?"

"A small task. Should only take a minute." He looked out his front window at the rain and grabbed an umbrella.

"Can't it wait?"

"Nope. Time is apparently of the essence."

"Why?"

"Mine is not to reason why, mine is but to do or die!" He cried gallantly and headed down the stairs and into the rain.

"Into the valley of death rode the six hundred." Bryn muttered, hitting the play button. "What a freak."

* * *

The worst of the downpour was over before the Range Rover made it home but a light rain still fell and the lightning and thunder were almost continuous. Despite the show being cut short, they had all had a wonderful time at the zoo; the setting was as beautiful as Marla had promised, the opening act was great and although Ms. Ball's set was curtailed, they all agreed it had been great while it lasted and the run through the rain soaked woods with lightning and thunder crashing around them made it a night to remember. Keith said he didn't even want to know about the change of clothes and was afraid to ask what Logan and Veronica were wearing below the waist. Veronica thought that was just as well, since Logan was wearing nothing but a pair of black compression shorts; also known as underwear and she was commando beneath the large t-shirt.

They were still laughing when they pulled up in front of the house.

"You can let me out at my car," Marla suggested as Logan slowed. "Why does it look funny?"

"I think…you have a flat." Keith said, peering out his window.

"Uh oh." Logan pulled into the driveway and parked. Lightning flashed as he and Keith got out of the car and went to take a look at Marla's tire.

"Oh my God!" Marla gasped.

"You've never had a flat?" Veronica asked, skewing around in the front seat to look at Marla. "I used to get them all the time."

"No—no! _Logan!_" Marla pointed out the window at the nearly naked young man crouching in the wet grass peering at her tire.

"Oh, yeah." Veronica chuckled as she glanced out the window at the two men standing in the rain. She leaned across and hit the button to lower the window. "Hey! Get back in the car before you catch your death!" she called out to the men. They obediently rose from the wet grass..

OH!" Marla squeaked and covered her face, laughing. Logan may as well have been naked for all the cover his now wet compression shorts provided. He yanked open the driver's door and slid in beside Veronica.

"It's flat," Keith told them, climbing in beside Marla. "But it doesn't look damaged. It's weird…"

"Well, don't worry, I've got a spare," Marla sighed, wiping her streaming eyes. "And a triple A card."

"You'd make a working man come out on a night like this for a flat?" Logan asked as thunder rolled above. "That's crazy."

"The wreckers will all be out, towing cars out of ditches on a night like this." Veronica pointed out. "We saw three between here and the zoo."

"Ah, you're right. This could take hours." Marla agreed. "I'll just call a cab and take care of the car in the morning…"

"Don't be silly," Keith scoffed. "I'll give you a ride home. Logan, get Veronica into some dry clothes and give me the keys."

"You don't even know where Marla lives!" Veronica pointed out. "I don't even know where Marla lives."

"If I ask very nicely, I bet she'll tell me." Her father informed her.

"I don't know," Marla raised her eyebrow at him. "I'd hate for you to think I was fast."

"Hang on," Logan said, pulling the Range Rover into the garage. "I'll get Ronnie into the house and bring you the keys."

Veronica thanked Marla profusely for the concert tickets as the younger couple jumped out of the car. They dashed to the house as Marla and Keith got out of the back seat.

"Of for crying out loud, the knuckle head locked the car." Keith said, pulling futilely on the handle to the driver's side.

"Here he comes," Marla nodded toward the back of the house as Logan, still mostly naked and now soaking wet again, ran across the yard. "Nope, no self consciousness in that kid," she observed.

"Here you go, Sheriff. GPS will get you home again." Logan tossed the key fob to his father in law, turned on his heel and disappeared back into the wet darkness, running toward the house.

"Okay!" Keith said, clicking the unlock button on the fob. He and Marla turned in surprise as the lights of the Ferrari blinked on.

"Oh." Marla blinked and turned to look at Keith, who looked dumbstruck. "I hope you can drive a stick."

"Can I?" Keith looked at her. "Just watch me!"

* * *

In the house, Veronica had gone straight up to the master suite while Logan had switched keys for Keith. She peeled off the large t-shirt, dropped it on her bedroom floor and headed for their huge shower. She turned on all four heads and filled the room with hot steam by the time her husband joined her under the spray. She wrapped her arms around him and his kiss was calculated to warm her up from the inside out.

"You're still wearing your shorts." She pointed out when they came up for air.

"Yeah…they're kind of in the way." Logan said, smiling down at her.

"You're going to rip them if you don't get them off pronto." She warned.

"You did this to me."

"Take them off."

"But I'd have to let go of you to get 'em off."

"So…let go. I won't let you fall."

"Can't. Don't want to."

"Well…allow me then…" she slid her hands down his sides to his hips.

The bathroom got steamier.

* * *

The rain was barely more than a drizzle as Keith drove Marla to her place; a renovated town house behind DeLaSalle high school on Nicolette Island.

Keith was amazed and impressed as he followed Marla's directions all the way through downtown Minneapolis on Hennepin Avenue, to the Mississippi river, where he hooked a right, down beneath the bridge over the river and around the school campus. He parked the Ferrari in front of Marla's place and got out of the car.

He opened her door for her while looking all around. They were a block behind the high school and the sky scrapers of downtown loomed over the trees from across the river but the street they were on was tree lined and almost bucolic.

"Where are we?" he asked Marla as she rose from the car.

"We're on an island in the middle of the Mississippi river, in the middle of down town Minneapolis." She said, grinning. "Home of the Islanders." She nodded toward the dark high school. "The team's first home game is in a week. The field is up that hill." She pointed in the darkness to the rising ground to the East of the building. "The Island is very small and literally an oasis in the middle of the city."

"From what I've seen, this city is packed with oases." Keith said, impressed.

"It really is." Marla said, nodding. "Our founders were great conservationists and laid out the city so that everyone who lived here would be within walking distance to a park. Even here in the middle of downtown. All the buildings on the Island are historic. My place here is completely updated on the inside but the outside had to adhere to its historic roots. Would you like to come in? You deserve a drink for driving me home; that wasn't in the original plan."

"I'd love a drink but I gotta admit; if it means I get to drive that Ferrari, I hope your car never runs again."

They went up the walk and into Marla's town house. She sat Keith in the livingroom and opened her liquor cabinet.

"What would you like? I have scotch, vodka, some wine…"

"Scotch. Scotch will be fine." Keith said with an involuntary shiver. He was still quite wet.

"Oh, here." She pulled out the bottle and some glasses. "You pour, I've got a sweater you can throw on." She headed toward the stairs to the loft bedroom. "I'll be a second; I'm going to throw on something comfortable."

Keith poured himself a drink wondering if 'put on something comfortable' still meant what it used to mean and how he'd react if it did.

* * *

Two minutes later, Marla was back, wearing warm, dry sweats and dragging a comb through her hastily towel dried hair. He didn't know if he was relieved or disappointed but he thought she looked more beautiful than ever. She was carrying a gorgeous, soft, fisherman's sweater. He couldn't identify the pang he felt, wondering why she had a man's sweater lying around.

"Put that on before you start sneezing." She said, tossing the sweater to him.

"Oh, that's nice." He said, pulling it on and feeling instantly warmer.

"Of course it's nice. It's Elliot's and he's gay." Marla said, picking up her own drink and falling into one of her soft, overstuffed armchairs.

"What with the sweater and the drink, I hardly remember getting caught in a downpour."

"That was fun." Marla grinned as she sipped her scotch. "I've been to dozens of concerts at the zoo but that's the first time a thunderstorm upstaged the headliner!"

"It was a blast." Keith assured her.

Maybe it was because it really wasn't a first date at all, maybe it was the fact that she put no pressure on him, maybe it was the sweats but Keith couldn't remember ever feeling more comfortable with a woman he'd just met. They talked and laughed and didn't even think to pour a second drink and suddenly hours had gone by. Keith stood, saying that not only would Veronica worry but Logan would report his car stolen if he didn't get back to the house soon.

"I never should have kept you so long!" Marla apologized. "But it's just…I never…"

"I know." Keith said, meeting her eyes at the front door. "Me neither."

"You're going back to the West Coast tomorrow." Marla said. It wasn't a question. "Figures."

"It was lovely meeting you." Keith said. "I'll be back. My daughter lives here."

"Right."

Impulsively, or maybe not…maybe he'd been thinking about it all night long, Keith leaned in and kissed her.

It wasn't a passionate kiss, not a promise of things to come or a bittersweet taste of what could never be. It was just a simple kiss but it was good enough. Plenty damn good enough.

As he got into the Ferrari out front, he paused and looked back at the one light still on in her townhouse.

"Don't do this to me." He muttered, shaking his head.

To be continued...


	26. Chapter 26 Revelation and Relief

Chapter 26 Revelation and Relief

Morning sunshine after a wild night of thunderstorms no longer surprised Veronica but it still amazed her how completely wiped out she felt after a wild night of Logan. What had begun in the shower had moved out of the bathroom and ended up all over their enormous bed where she awoke nine hours later from a deep and refreshing sleep that could more accurately be described as a sex induced coma.

She could barely move.

Raising heavy eyelids, she saw that her natural post orgasm lethargy was compounded by the fact that she was laying right where she'd fallen asleep. Fallen asleep, passed out, whatever; she'd done it half under Logan's sprawled body and that's where she woke up.

She exhaled a long, satisfied sigh.

The only other man she had ever spent the night with had been Duncan and the few times she had done so they had retreated to their opposite corners after the main event. Sure, there had been some cuddling but when it was time to sleep, they may as well have been in separate beds.

Logan, on the other hand, frequently reached for her in his sleep. He hadn't been kidding when he'd said he'd pay good cash money just to hold her all night. Most of the time it wasn't much more than simple contact, laying close enough to touch; foot to foot or hip to hip but sometimes he threw an arm or leg over her while he slept and occasionally he rolled half on top of her, his face in her hair, breathing her in all night long.

The first time it ever happened had been quite a shock; not so much the sudden weight of a man who had seventy pounds on her but the fact that she liked it so much. She loved waking up wrapped in his arms like a security blanket. Instead of feeling smothered, she felt _needed_. It was the best feeling she'd ever had.

Okay, the second best feeling she'd ever had.

She rolled her head toward him and smiled, watching him sleep. He looked so innocent. It was hard to believe this angel faced boy dreaming next to her was the evil, erotic genius responsible for the out of body experience she'd had just a few hours earlier. Logan was always good but every once in a while he out did himself, revealing depths of depravity and taking her to heights she had thought only existed in cheesy Harlequin romances.

She smiled to herself, remembering what a revelation sex with Logan had been. A revelation and a relief.

During their senior year of high school, after the bus crash shoved their mortality down their throats, Veronica had thrown caution to the wind and given herself to Duncan. It wasn't her first time. It wasn't even their first time together but it had felt like it. It had been the first time in her life when she had made the decision to have sex and chosen to do it with the boy she loved.

At the time, she had been sure she loved Duncan; had always loved Duncan. Her heart had ached for him for so long. It had been a terrible lie that had broken them up and she told herself it never would have happened if not for the malice of Celeste. At the time, it had been easy to see their two years apart as a sort of evil, alternate universe; a place they were never meant to be and didn't have to remain. Senior year was all about righting the wrongs of the past and claiming the future they wanted.

Or so it had seemed.

But immediately, her memory of that night had become less about the boy she'd made love to and all about the one she'd run into in the hall.

Her preoccupation with Logan should have told her something but no one on earth was as stubborn as Veronica when she got an idea in her head. She had convinced herself that she and Duncan were made for each other and she wasn't about to let some unidentified yearning get in her way.

"_If cuddling is the best part, he didn't do it right."_

It took Veronica exactly one week to realize that cuddling had been the best part. She loved the closeness, the warmth…but the act? Not so much. That first time, it had been exciting and romantic and just a tad uncomfortable and so what if it didn't last very long? Teenage boys aren't known for their control. It lasted long enough to send her home in an afterglow of tenderness, if only _someone _hadn't snarked all over it and distracted her.

A week after their first time, Veronica had taken advantage of Keith being out of town to return to Duncan's bed. Again, the sex had been gentle, romantic and quick. Lying in Duncan's arms afterward, she had actually thought to herself that _this_ was her favorite part.

And then she had silently cursed Logan Echolls to hell.

She _loved_ Duncan. He was sweet, tender and warm and that's exactly how he made love.

After a month, she remembered that Duncan was as new to this as she was. He had never been an initiator so she figured it was up to her to forge a way down this new path they had taken together. So, she tried to take the lead. She was determined to knock their love life up a notch, even if she had to drag Duncan along, kicking and screaming. In fact, kicking and screaming sounded _hot._

Rousing Duncan to passion had turned out to be a more difficult project than she expected. His appetite didn't seem to match up to hers, he never seemed to get what she was doing and it was fatally easy to turn him off completely. It finally occurred to her that sweet, tender and warm is what Duncan wanted. It's who Duncan _was_. And she loved him for it. His staid, predictable personality had been what attracted her. His dependability made her feel safe. She told herself that what she and Duncan had was mature, real; a long lasting love that wouldn't burn out like the passionate flames of lust. Who needed any of that when genuine, true _liking_ and admiration were present? Who needed moaning and headboard banging when one could have tenderness and security?

So why did she keep hearing Logan's stupid voice saying "_if cuddling is the best part, he didn't' do it right" _in her head?

She just figured that passion was over rated. (She steadfastly refused to remember Lilly's irreverent imitation of Celeste and Jake's 'wild' ride. Or to consider that the nut doesn't fall far from the tree. Or that she and Celeste just might have something in common.) What she and Duncan had was so much more than mere passion…

She missed him when he was gone. She missed him just like you miss wearing a rain coat when the sun comes back out.

* * *

When she and Logan reconnected after graduation, they took things slowly. Having mentally cast sex as over rated, Veronica was in no hurry to push the physical side of things.

That summer had been filled with distractions; settling Aaron's estate, getting Logan into school, closing the cases of the bus crash, the plane explosion and the sad, sordid story of Cassidy Casablancas. Add to all that the horror of almost losing Keith, Veronica hadn't been in a state to even consider moving to the next level with Logan.

He never pressured her. Without making an issue of it, he gave her time and space, respecting her boundaries just as he had their first time around. He gave no indication of having any expectations of a physical relationship beyond what she was comfortable with.

It was the week before classes were scheduled to start at Hearst and they were together, watching a movie in his suite at the Neptune Grand. Logan had simply taken her hand in his. She had glanced at him in the darkened room and appreciation for his patience washed over her like a heat wave; this was no awkward adolescent who didn't know how to make a move. This was the guy who had nailed half the girls in Neptune, including Big Dick's trophy wife, holding her hand in the dark as though taking further liberties was beyond his imagination. Gratitude was the least of the emotions that had rushed through her and she made the decision then and there that such forbearance would be rewarded.

An hour later, she was questioning everything she thought she knew.

Logan and Duncan had always been very close to the same size, height and build, they were both athletic and graceful, evenly matched whether golfing, surfing or playing tennis, so Veronica just assumed sex with one would be similar to the other. She hadn't taken into account personality, creativity, stamina and imagination. It certainly never occurred to her that Logan's volatile temperament, a disadvantage on the golf course or tennis court, could be an advantage on a more personal playing field. Having inadvertently listened in on Logan and Kendall, she had expected something more boisterous and energetic than what she'd experienced with Duncan.

She certainly hadn't expected the slow burn.

Logan had taken his time, setting every square inch of her body ablaze with desire before he even finished undressing her. Using his hands and mouth he took away her powers of speech and thought. By the time he entered her, she existed in a place made entirely of primal senses; taste, smell, touch, sight and sound.

"_Not over rated," _was the first cogent thought she was able to form afterward, when her stupefied brain finally drew enough pieces back together to function._ Thank God!_

She floated through the next twenty four hours, giddy with relief to finally understand what all the fuss was about. Control freak that she was, she had tried hard not to let him know how impressed she had been.

She figured Logan was conceited enough without her letting him know that she suspected he was some kind of sex god.

She was glad he'd brushed it off as a joke when she had blurted something honest the first time they spent the whole night together.

_You should seriously consider going pro at that!_

It wasn't until the next morning that she realized he hadn't returned the compliment. Then she started thinking about how he had gotten that way. The names, faces and figures of all the women and girls he'd had began to flit through her mind. From Lilly to Kendall, all the women she knew about were gorgeous, sexy, experienced and she suspected, adventurous to the point of kinky.

The demon of jealousy reared its head in the days immediately after her first full night with Logan.

Veronica sighed, watching her sleeping husband and remembering the birth of Bat-shit Crazy Girl.

It wasn't that surprising, looking back. Given her natural insecurities, _of course_ she went a little nuts. She had never stopped to consider that she was competing with all the women in his past but after their first night together, she couldn't help but worry that he had been as bored by her as she'd been blown away by him. The thought terrified her and she knew she hadn't handled it well, starting with her minor freak out when he tried to give her a key to his room just a few weeks later.

Four years of psychological studies gave her a little bit of insight into her own behavior. She knew she had control issues. That part had been easy. The trust issues and abandonment issues (thanks, Mom) had been equally obvious but eventually she had come to realize she had problems not just with intimacy but with sex, as well.

Transference, projection, misplaced anger…there were lots of terms to describe what she went through during the months immediately following her becoming sexually involved with Logan but the bottom line was that she had not trusted what they had because it was too good to be true. Her initial happiness at finding out how great sex can be quickly gave way to worrying about her own inadequacy and inexperience. This, compounded by her disappointment in her father at finding out about his affair with Harmony had done a major number on her psyche. Subconsciously, she felt it was only a matter of time before Logan got bored with her, so she had thrown all of her self defense mechanisms into overdrive in order to keep him at arm's length.

So it was kind of ironic that when he inevitably dumped her, it was because she made _him_ feel inadequate.

She had accused him of lying by omission when he didn't tell her about Madison but she had been guilty of the same sin. In fact, what she did was worse; he had kept information from her because he thought the truth would hurt her. She had kept information from him because she didn't want him to feel _too pleased _with himself.

_Flashback_

"_Here's something I want to know; " Logan said one evening as they sat on his balcony overlooking the Atlantic ocean at Virginia Beach, in the condo he'd rented for the summer months while she completed her internship for the FBI at Quantico. He had come East with her to continue rebuilding what they'd begun putting back together during finals week. Clearing the air about the past and making sure they each knew where the other stood was the topic of conversation for the summer. "Why did you get so ridiculously pissed at me for having sex after we'd broken up?"_

"_Are you kidding me?" she asked. "First of all, ever since the day we kissed at the Camelot, I was always going to be pissed at you for having sex with someone else, and no girl likes to find out her ex didn't spend their entire time apart pining over her."_

"_I'm talking about the second time, when let's face it; you knew by then that I was capable of pining and fucking at the same time. In fact, I did some of my _best _pining while I…" he stopped, catching the look on her face._

"_Not a skill you should be bragging about, by the way." she pointed out._

"_You never trusted me and while I understand the impulse, I can absolutely assure you that you can."_

"_I know. I do."_

"_But you acted like I was the only guy ever to take solace in the arms of another girl! And it couldn't have just been because of who I hooked up with."_

"_We've already been over this." Veronica wished the whole Madison episode and all its ramifications could be dropped down the memory hole. "I told you I was wrong. Why do we keep coming back to it?"_

"_It's not about her, it's…" he looked at her, his face a mix of trepidation and determination. "…your reaction." He sat back in his chair, shaking his head in frustration. "You couldn't get away from me fast enough when you found out about that but you forgave Duncan the same day you found out he knocked up Meg. Why was what I did so much worse? Meg was not just some drunken hook up; you know she meant more to him than that! But you forgave him immediately."_

"_Ohh." She curled her legs up into the chair she was sitting in. "This is about Duncan."_

"_Yeah." He nodded. "Because I don't get it. Or maybe I do."_

_She looked at him, feeling a stone of guilt pressing on her heart, remembering the words he'd thrown at her at the Neptune Grand after Piz dumped her._

"I always figured you'd leave me for Duncan if you had the chance; that I could understand…"

"_You think I forgave him because I loved him more than I love you? No." She slipped out of her chair and knelt on the floor in front of him; looking him in the eye to be sure he understood that what she told him was true. "You have it backwards; it was easy to forgive Duncan because _I didn't care_."_

"_You didn't care?" Logan repeated, looking skeptical._

"_Nope." She shrugged. "After the initial shock, I felt nothing. I didn't care that my boyfriend had been with someone else and the whole world was going to see living, breathing proof in a few months. It was like hearing about two people who had nothing to do with me. I didn't even care enough to be embarrassed."_

"_I don't believe it." Logan flatly stated._

"_Why do you think I let him leave?" she pointed out. "Duncan was a legal adult; he didn't need his parents' permission to sue for custody of his own daughter. It's true, his epilepsy would have been an issue but if I had wanted to, I could have married him and together, we would have won custody. I knew that if he took that baby and skipped, that was the end of us! But instead of helping him legally, I aided and abetted his disappearance. I weighed the pros and cons and chose to risk federal kidnapping charges over hanging on to him. I was over him; he was a habit I was too lazy to break.  
But the thought of you with anyone else makes me completely insane." _

_She took the beer he was drinking out of his hand so she could take his hands in hers. "You told me that finding out that Lilly cheated on you allowed you to move on. Well, I guess it was sort of like that for me; while you moved forward, I was trying to move backward. Getting back with Duncan may have been a mistake but maybe it was the only way to be sure there was nothing there. Nothing could have proved that to me better than my reaction to Meg's pregnancy. Do you know how I remember Duncan, now?"_

_He shook his head, unwilling to hazard a guess._

"_I had a dream the night before we graduated," she began, smiling. "Everyone was there; Lilly, Duncan, Wallace, you…none of the bad stuff had happened and we were all so happy. Everything was exactly like it should have been. And even though Lilly was alive and Duncan was there, in the dream he wasn't my boyfriend. You were. In real life, you and I were barely on speaking terms but in the dream, you said you loved me and I _loved_ you! And Duncan was just the guy standing next to you."_

_End flashback._

"I made everything more difficult than it had to be," she chided herself, thinking of those difficult, wasted years. Suddenly she was looking into sleepy, caramel brown eyes.

"Mmm?" he murmured, "what did you say?"

"I make everything so _hard._" She told him, placing one hand on his face. He looked at her for a long moment, coming slowly awake.

"Yeah," he grinned. "That's my favorite thing about you."

* * *

Forty minutes later, showered and dressed, Veronica headed down to the kitchen, determined to act like staying in bed all morning was normal. She still couldn't stand the thought of flaunting her sex life in front of her Dad.

To her amazement, Keith was nowhere to be found.

"What in the world?" she said, coming back into the kitchen from the patio just as Logan came down the stairs. "Its nine thirty and Dad's not up!"

"So?" Logan filled a cup of coffee and lifted the lid on the chafing dish to help himself to some of the bacon and scrambled eggs JR had made sure was ready for them whenever they came down.

"So? That is _not _normal behavior for him; he never stays in bed past seven."

"He's on vacation." Logan shrugged. "You want a plate?"

"I wonder if he went out." Veronica ignored the offer of breakfast and looked toward the lake across the street. "Maybe he took out the canoe."

"This bacon is perfect."

"Did you hear him come in last night?" She suddenly turned to Logan. "What if something happened?"

"If something happened to the Ferrari, I'd know it." Logan said, confidently.

"Would Onstar have called the house?"

"Nah, I'd just know it like a mother knows when her child is in trouble."

"The Ferrari is not your child."

"And the Sheriff isn't yours."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's none of our business if he stays out late and wants to sleep in."

"OH!" she gasped. "He came home, didn't he?"

"Of course he did."

"How do you know?" she demanded. "Did you hear him?"

"The key." Logan lifted the Ferrari fob out of the silver dish they kept all the keys in and waved it for her. "It didn't get here by itself."

"Well, then where is he?"

"Where's who?" Keith asked, coming down the stairs in his robe.

"Dad!" Veronica smiled in relief, "Where've you been?"

"The bedroom you said was for me." He took the plate Logan offered him and filled it with breakfast. "You woke me up with all your early morning jabbering."

"Early morning? It's quarter to ten!"

"Is it?" Keith took a cup of coffee and his plate and headed toward the patio. "Looks like it's going to be another gorgeous day."

Logan smiled innocently at his wife, then picked up his breakfast and followed his father in law out to the patio. Veronica glared suspiciously after them.

"Well, where's my breakfast?" she grumped.

* * *

They ate out on the patio, discussing what to do about Marla's car.

"When I saw how late it was, I half expected her car to be gone already." Veronica admitted. "I guess she slept late, too."

"Well, it is a Holiday." Keith pointed out.

"I'm not sure Realtors take off Labor Day." Veronica said.

"Her car is still out front." Logan observed, dialing JR. "Hey, get a truck out here to fix Marla's tire." He told his henchman. "You did? Good man." He hung up the phone and told the other two, "JR has someone coming out to fill up her tire."

"How did JR know she didn't need a spare?" Veronica asked.

"I left him a message last night." Logan told her.

"Really. When?"

"Probably when he gave me the key to the Ferrari," Keith said, refilling his coffee mug, ignoring the suspicious look in his daughter's eyes as they cut in his direction.

"Am I the only one who thinks it's weird that Marla's tire is flat but unharmed?" she asked.

"Oh, that is weird." Logan agreed.

"Honey, if Marla doesn't need to replace her tire, that's a good thing." Keith pointed out. "She's lucky whoever let the air out didn't key her car as well."

"Are you sure she didn't get keyed?" Veronica pounced. "It was pretty wet and rainy last night."

"It was, wasn't it?" Keith remarked in surprise. "You'd never guess we had such a storm just a few hours ago!"

"Yeah, yeah, normal Minnesota summer weather, whatever." Veronica brushed off the clear skies. "You sound pretty sure Marla didn't get keyed."

"You sound like you hope she did." Keith frowned.

"No, no! I just wondered why you assumed…"

"Look, vandals usually do their work as quickly as possible." Keith explained, patiently. "They rarely do damage to both sides of a vehicle; too easy to get caught."

"But isn't it unusual for the damage to be on the passenger side of the vehicle?" she pressed. "Most vandals use their cars to block the view of what they're doing."

"Yes, assuming the perpetrator had a car; could've been kids on foot in which case; passenger side."

"I guess." she acquiesced, reluctantly.

"Does this even rise to the level of vandalism?" Logan asked. "It was just air; no damage, no trip to the body shop, she doesn't need a new tire. JR'll have someone out here within a half hour with an air hose to fill it up. The only thing left to do is get the thing back to Marla. V, you want to call her and tell her she can come and get it?"

"I have a better idea," Keith said, pulling out his phone. "I'll drop it off and you can pick me up there and we'll go do whatever we're going to do today. What are we going to do today?"

"The falls!" Veronica said. "I want to take you all the way down to the river!"

"Sounds great!" Keith stood up and went into the kitchen to call Marla.

The moment the back door shut behind him, Veronica turned to Logan and punched him in the arm.

"OW." Logan looked at her in surprise. "What?"

"_Dad has Marla's number in his phone!" _she hissed.

"So? They seemed to hit it off last night."

"Do you think…? I never heard him come in, I was…"

"In a coma."

"Sshhh! We woke him up at _quarter to ten_? How long do you think he stayed at Marla's? I don't suppose there's a chance he got lost coming back here, do you?"

"No."

"Why do you think he was up so late?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Logan laughed. "Relax! He was with Marla."

"Really? Do you think he was _with _Marla? Omigod, what is wrong with him?" Veronica glared at the house where she supposed her Dad was now talking with her Realtor.

"What do you mean?" Logan asked, slightly alarmed. "We like Marla, don't we?"

"We love Marla. I meant what is wrong with my _Dad_?"

"You mean besides getting supremely lucky last night?"

"Ew. No. Marla is not the type of woman to make it with a guy she just met who's leaving town the next day!"

"Maybe your Dad is smoother than you think." Logan chuckled.

"Ew! NO. Although, he did once try to convince me that there was a time when he was cool...I seem to remember something about a stacked babe on his arm, or in his car? No." She shook her head to clear the image and explained. "Since my Mom took off, Dad has dated my school counselor, my best friend's mom, a married woman and now my _Realtor_? This is just too _weird_!"

"Sounds to me like he picks completely inappropriate women when he ventures outside your sphere of influence." Logan frowned.

"I just think it would be nice if even once, Dad introduced me to his girlfriend instead of the other way around."

"Why?"

"Why? Because…I…it's…Ugh!" she shook her head.

"Ronnie, you know perfectly well you'd hate any woman your Dad introduced you to. You'd get all territorial, you'd nit pick her death and when he inevitably chose you over her, you'd be overjoyed."

"Not if she were good enough for him!"

"She wouldn't be."

Veronica sighed and turned back to her bacon and eggs. "You're right." She admitted. "It's just kind of weird, I guess."

"Why? She's beautiful, smart, fun and he knows you like her. It makes sense."

"Yeah...He just…hasn't…you know."

"I _think _I know. To which I can only say 'how do you know?' he hasn't?"

"Oh, no; I _know _he has, I just…" Veronica shuddered. "Ewww."

"Grow up." Said the boy whose entire life had been shaped by his parents' sexuality. "Wouldn't it be nice to see your Dad with someone you like?"

"Of course! It would be the biggest relief in the world to know he had someone and was happy! Too bad there aren't any women like Marla in Neptune." Veronica said, arching an eyebrow. "I wish there were."

"You're right. So where can we find someone like Marla?" Logan scrunched up his forehead, concentrating. He snapped his fingers and said "Hey; what about Marla?"

"Logan, be serious! Marla lives here."

"So do you."

"And Dad lives in Neptune." She rolled her eyes at him, stating the obvious.

"You're right. Too bad there's that law prohibiting the movement between states."

She chewed on that for a few moments. "You think it would be cool if Dad fell for Marla, don't you?" she finally said.

"I think the more reasons the Sheriff has for moving here, the sooner he'll do it."

"You let the air out of Marla's tires, didn't you?"

"Moi? " Logan exclaimed, the picture of offended innocence. "I was with you all night!"

"You gave him the keys to the Ferrari."

"It's more gas efficient than the Range Rover. I was being ecologically responsible. You're always telling me I should be."

"That car is a panty extractor."

"Wanna go for a drive?" Logan leered at her as Keith returned from the kitchen.

"Logan!" she gasped in mock indignation. "Not in front of my Father!"

* * *

Marla slept in a little later than usual, as well. She was sipping coffee and reading the newspaper on her little back deck overlooking the park and the Mississippi as the morning sun slanted through the trees to the East. She had gone to sleep feeling giddy and the mood persisted as she perused the metro section of the Star Tribune.

"God, what a rotten paper." She sighed, getting to the end of the local news section. "Oh." She frowned, seeing another brief story of a coed who had turned up missing after a weekend of parties. Living in a town filled with Colleges and Universities, one was often reminded that stupidity actually could be fatal. Every single year, two or three college students disappeared, only to be dragged out of the river a week or so later, cause of death; urinating while drunk. Used to just be football fans and frat boys but this year it seemed to be more female students than male.

"You've come a long way, baby." She muttered to herself, hoping the body wouldn't wash up on her little island. She leaned back in her chair and looked at the blue sky through the dark green foliage above her and listened to the faint sound of traffic on the Hennepin Ave bridge nearby and felt the smile that had threatened to cramp her cheekbones return to her face. She sighed, remembering the night before.

She pulled out her phone and dialed Elliot.

"Smooches, Peaches!" He sang, by way of a greeting. "How was your big date? Can you talk on the phone or should I come over? Is he still there? Are they all still there? OH. Are you at the house? Did you do it with daddy while the delectable couple slept in the other room? You dirty little vixen!"

"Shut up, Elliot." Marla laughed. "I'm at home, alone. My night was perfectly lovely, we had a marvelous time even though the concert ended two minutes after the rain started."

"It rained last night?"

"Poured. Thunder, lightning, the works. How do you not know this?"

"Brick and I were at a Lord of the Rings marathon over at the Riverview. Started at seven last night and I just got home."

"A Lord of the Rings marathon?"

"Yup. Fifteen hours of Vigo and company. It was a fundraiser."

"For what?"

"Don't know, don't care; Maybe it was a hellraiser. Whatever; Brick held my hand all night long."

"Well, I had a wonderful evening too, despite the absence of Hobbits." She told Elliot about the rain storm and returning to the house to find her tire flat and Keith bringing her home in the Ferrari and inviting him in for a drink.

"A drink?" Elliot chortled. "Is that what the cool kids are calling it these days? You slut."

"It was a drink." Marla laughed. "I'm old school, Elliot. My days of casual…dating are over."

"OH. My. God." Elliot sighed. "You're in love."

"I can't deny that there's something really sweet about drawing out the whole…thing."

"Don't have to tell me _that_, girlfriend." Elliot snorted.

"Stop trying to make it sound dirty. It was better than that. We talked for three hours."

"You talked for three hours?" Elliot breathed. "Non stop? _You slut._"

"Yes. It seemed like no time at all! We only had one drink and suddenly it was practically dawn. I haven't had so much fun with a man since you taught me to roller blade."

"Omigod, we had so much fun that day!"

"Yes! We went through three bottles of Far Niente Chardonnay that afternoon and scared all the cats on Nicollett Island!" Marla laughed, remembering.

"And you still can't roller blade," Elliot clucked. "You're not very athletic."

"I was doing just fine until you cracked open the third bottle!"

"Third one's the charm, dearest."

"Not while roller blading."

"Well, Logan's dad must really be something. No surprise, there."

"OH! That reminds me; he's not Logan's dad, he's Veronica's."

"Uh…how did that happen?"

"I guess Logan took her name."

"Huh. No hyphen or anything. How modern. Post modern, even." Elliot sounded thoughtful. "You know, now that you mention it, I could've sworn she told us Logan's parents died in a house fire or something when he was in high school."

"Yeah...could be. Anyway, Keith Mars is a wonderful, delightful man."

"Well, we knew Veronica didn't come from naugahyde, didn't we?"

"Yes…" Marla nodded.

"It certainly looks like our deal worked out great for both of us; I missed a concert that got rained out, you got a fabulous night with a stone cold hottie and I get two extra tickets for the Grandstand this week. That's what I call a win/win, win/win/win/win/win/win!"

"Yeah…say, Elliot, who do you think of when someone says 'world's sexiest man' and 'homicidal maniac'?"

"OJ Simpson."

"WHAT?"

"Hey, the Juice was _hot _once upon a time and danger doesn't exactly quench the thirst, if you know what I mean."

"But sexiest man in the world?"

"Are you sure you don't mean Sexiest Man Alive?"

"What's the difference?"

"Sexiest Man Alive! People magazine? Every year they put out an issue and give the title to some actor with a hot new movie. OJ was never the cover."

"Who was?"

"Well Mel Gibson was the first to be given that title. So there; Mel Gibson."

"He's a maniac but homicidal?"

"Only a matter of time, if you ask me. Or anyone."

"Who else?"

"Well, I wouldn't trust Ben Affleck as far as I can throw him but I've never heard anything to suggest he was homicidal and while _I'm_ convinced Nick Nolte had to have killed someone to get on the list at all, _everyone _calls me a conspiracy nut when I say so, so I guess that leaves Aaron Echolls."

"Aaron Echolls?"

"Yes. I think it's totally bogus when they pick someone twice. I mean, they should have just given it to Richard Gere but _no, _they had to give it to him _and_ his beard…like anyone fell for that little ruse. Anyway, he was Sexiest Man when he was with Cindy Crawford and then again, five years later without her. What am I supposed to think, that he stopped being Richard Gere for those years in between? And Brad Pitt? So boring. I mean, the first time yes, of course but the second time it was like they weren't even trying anymore! And why on God's Earth should George Clooney be the Sexiest Man Alive twice when Russell Crowe's never been even once? Matt Damon just looks like a box full of teeth."

"Elliot, slow down!" Marla laughed. "You take this very seriously, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Well…who was the latest?"

"Johnny Depp."

"It took People till now to choose Johnny Depp?" Marla couldn't believe it.

"Oh no; It's his second time but I can't argue with that. I'm not _insane_."

"Are you sure?" she asked, unsteadily.

"People should just stop while they're ahead. Johnny Depp keeps getting hotter every year. If they try and say someone else is sexier, they're just going to make themselves look stupid."

"Heaven forbid People Magazine should look stupid."

"I know, right?"

"Oh, Elliot!" Marla burst out laughing. "We could have had so much fun if we'd moved in together!"

"No, darling." He told her sadly. "You'd have lost all respect for me as a human being by now."

"What about Aaron Echolls?"

"I suppose plenty of people lost respect for him as a human being…right about the time of the Ben Affleck fiasco, he got charged with all sorts of sordid things, including killing that software heiress but he was acquitted just before Jude Law."

"What was Jude Law acquitted of?"

"No; Aaron was cleared right before Jude Law made the Sexiest Man Alive cover." Elliot explained with a sniff. "As if."

"You disagreed with Jude Law?"

"Don't you?" Elliot demanded.

"Yes, but probably not for the same reason."

"If I went for Jude Law, I may as well like _women_!" Elliot huffed.

"Oh my God, we do have the same reason!"

* * *

After they agreed to meet at noon to set up the open house they were showing that afternoon, Marla went inside and fired up her laptop. She Googled Aaron Echolls and in a few moments found herself looking at Logan Mars' family portrait. A few links later and she understood completely why that young man had taken his wife's name.

She clicked on the 1987 cover of People magazine and stared at it.

"Huh!" she said, sitting back in surprise. "Logan's much better looking than his dad."

* * *

Keith dropped off Marla's car at her place around 11:30 while Logan and Veronica followed in the Audi. They waved at Marla but waited in the car.

"They sure look all cozy with each other." Veronica said, watching the older couple carefully.

"Don't stare, it's rude." Logan said, fiddling with the radio.

"Do you think Marla let the air out of her own tire?"

"Yeah, she's definitely the type who needs to stoop to subterfuge to get a man's attention." Logan said, rolling his eyes.

"You'd be surprised what we'd stoop to for the right man." Veronica shrugged.

"She did ask him out. That sneaky wench." Logan peered up the sidewalk suspiciously.

"Dad really likes her." Veronica remarked, watching her father's animated face as he spoke to older woman.

"There's no accounting for taste. Independent, beautiful, smart…uggh." He did a whole body shudder then pointed at his wife "oh, wait."

She just stared at him.

"What did you stoop to for me?" he asked, curiously.

"Who says you're the right man?" she said, sweetly.

"You're funny."

"Yeah, we're a pair of vaudevillians."

"Vaudeville?" Keith said, getting into the back seat. "I can't sing but I have been known to shuffle off to Buffalo on occasion."

"Don't sell yourself short, Dad!" Veronica told him. "You could have made a living as a stand up and you know it!"

"Really? You think I could have made it as a comedian?" he asked, buckling up.

"A comedian?" his daughter looked aghast. "No."

"You were thinking 'stand in'." Logan said.

"What does a stand in do?" she asked.

"Just stands on a mark while the lighting guys do their job so the stars can drop E in their trailers."

"Oh. Yes." She met her Dad's eye in the rearview. "That's what I meant."

"I don't think they even used stand-ins in vaudeville." Keith pointed out.

"Maybe that's why it died." Logan suggested as they pulled away, waving at Marla.

* * *

They took the scenic river road to get to the Minnehaha falls, stopping along the way to admire the Stone Arch bridge and St. Anthony Falls on the Mississippi. As well as barges on the big river, they saw pleasure crafts and sailboats. They parked the Audi in a lot near the Longfellow house and spent the rest of the afternoon meandering around the park, starting above the falls and eventually wending their way down below and through the woods to the Mississippi river. Logan wondered if anyone ever took a sailboard out on the river while Veronica took shots of her dad and the bald eagles circling over head and diving for their dinners.

Keith thought it was too bad that they hadn't brought lawn chairs and fishing lines, like the handful of gents angling along the shoreline.

"You'd get along really well with my Section Chief," Veronica told him. "He's a fan of yours."

"What? I wouldn't think an FBI Section Chief would be aware of my existence." Keith said in surprise.

"You're a celebrity in the crime fighting world, Dad." She told him. "And when he's not bustin' crime, SecChief Larson lives for fishing and baseball."

"Sounds like a swell guy." Keith nodded. "But I'm still skeptical that he knows anything about me."

"Never underestimate the long arm of the federal government, Sheriff." Logan said.

Keith's phone rang when they were on their way back up to the top of the falls.

"Hi," he said. "I didn't expect to hear from you."

Logan and Veronica looked at each other.

"Uh, let me see…" Keith patted his pockets down. "Wow. No. I guess I did leave my sunglasses in your car!"

Veronica's eyebrows flew up as Logan looked away from her.

"We were just about to grab a bite at…Honey, what's the name of the place?"

"The Sea Salt." Veronica said.

"The Sea Salt." Keith said into the phone. "Why don't you join us here? Yes. Oh, it's spectacular! I was moved to write a poem, myself! Yes! Okay then. See you in about twenty." He hung up the phone, oblivious of the euphoric look on his face or the stares of the kids. "I left my sunglasses in Marla's car. She's going to join us for dinner to return them."

"You left your sunglasses behind?" Veronica said with exaggerated surprise. "How unlike you!"

"What do you mean? I'm as forgetful as the next guy." Keith said, bounding eagerly up the stone steps toward the restaurant.

"Left his sunglasses in her car. Smoooooth. Your Dad's a playa, he is." Logan muttered in his wife's ear. "Marla doesn't stand a chance."

"He's leaving in a few hours!" Veronica said.

"They can't afford to waste any time." Logan nodded. "Not at their age."

* * *

Marla easily found them at the restaurant and they ordered their dinners and sat at a table outside. Marla had a glass of wine while the Mars all had locally brewed beer as they ate their dinners of calamari, crabcakes and Logan had a catfish po-boy that was, he claimed, to die for.

They talked, ate, drank and laughed until Marla finally stood to say goodby.

"Thanks for letting me horn in on your dinner." She smiled.

"It was our pleasure!" Keith assured her, standing as well.

"Oh. Well, thanks again." Marla said. "Keith, you keep an eye on your glasses."

"I will." He said. He remained standing as he watched Marla walk off to her car.

"I hate to see you go but I love to watch you leave." Logan muttered. Veronica smacked his arm. "Ow."

"Well," Keith finally turned back to the table holding the detritus of their dinners. "I guess we should shove off, if we're going to take the scenic route home."

"Okay." Veronica smiled at her dad. She hadn't seen him look so happy in years. She was determined that this time he wouldn't have to ask her to let him be happy. She wanted her Dad to be as happy as she was.

_If that involves Marla, whom I do like, I guess I can live with that!_

They had just gotten on the parkway when Keith's phone rang again. He looked at the display and frowned.

"What's up, Eli?" He asked. "I told you not…who? Really. Did they say what they...? No one else, huh? Okay. _Really_? Wow. Tell them I'll be there." He hung up, looking frustrated.

"What's up?" Veronica asked.

"An important client needs to meet with me first thing tomorrow morning. Eli says they only want to work with me but it's time sensitive, so if I can't make it for breakfast, they'll find someone else. We're talking big money. We don't want them to find someone else."

"Big money? How big?"

"Fifty grand." Keith said. "I hate to pass up a case like that."

"Who is it?" Logan asked.

"You know I can't say." Keith said. "But I have to get to the airport right away and try to catch an earlier flight. I can't land in San Diego at five and make a breakfast meeting in Neptune. I hope I can get a seat."

"No problem." Logan said, turning off the parkway and heading toward the highway. "We'll get you home."

* * *

Back at the house, while Keith quickly packed, Logan made a phone call. They were back in the car in no time, heading for the airport.

As they pulled into the terminal, Keith looked confused. "This isn't where I flew in," he pointed out. They were at the smaller Humphrey Terminal, across from the Fort Snelling Cemetary, where airlines such as Sun Country and Southwest had their gates but Logan didn't turn in there, either. He continued to the next exit and turned right instead of left.

"I told you we'd get you home," Logan said. "No lines, no security, no waiting, no worries."

He pulled right out onto the tarmac and came to a stop near a small shack just off the runway where the jet was waiting, fueled and ready to go. The pilot came out of the shack and met them at the car.

"Mr. Mars, good evening!" he said.

"Good evening." Logan and Keith said, simultaneously.

"Thanks for making it on such short notice, Hubbs." Logan shook the pilot's hand. "This is Keith Mars, your passenger for this flight. Take good care of him."

"Of course!" The pilot nodded. "I filed the flight plan into San Diego as soon as you called. We're supplied, fueled and ready to go. Are you in a hurry, sir?" he asked Keith. "'Cause 'in a hurry' is my favorite way to fly!"

"Oh, I'm sure we'll get there in plenty of time." Keith grinned, "No need to hurry."

"Oh." Hubbs looked disappointed but recovered. "Okay! See you on board."

"You really didn't have to do this." Keith turned to Logan as the pilot picked up Keith's bag and strode to the plane. "I'm sure I could have caught a flight."

"On Labor Day?" Veronica said, hugging her Dad goodbye. "No, you couldn't. Take the jet Dad. Fitty Grand!"

"Come on, if you bail on him, Hubbs is gonna cry." Logan said. "I like to keep my pilot happy."

"Oh, I'm not gonna bail." Keith assured him, giving him the one armed guy hug. "But you didn't have to."

"Yeah, I did."

"Well, kids." Keith stood back and grinned at them. "This has been a blast but I really gotta go. Crime waits for no man!"

"Great." Veronica said. "Three great days and you gotta leave me on a lame pun?"

"You're right. I'm sorry." Keith said. "It isn't even true. Crime waits; it's that fifty grand I gotta hurry on."

"Go!" Logan waved him toward the jet. He and Veronica stood on the tarmac until the small powerful craft disappeared into the setting sun.

"I guess I should feel lucky that his trip was only cut short a couple of hours." Veronica said as they got into the car.

"Look at it this way; after he's had a taste of the jet, no way can he go back to first class!"

"You planned this all along, didn't you?" Veronica narrowed her eyes at him.

"Moi?" Logan objected. "I am not that clever."

To Be Continued...


	27. Chapter 27  Part II

Chapter 27 Part II

Trooper Tim Linker shook his head as he drove up the on ramp to 35W, heading south toward the Twin Cities. He'd just finished his 3 a.m. coffee break and was feeling alert and ready for the remainder of his shift. As he headed onto the interstate, a blur swept by him to the left, going so fast it rocked his sedan. He glanced at his radar and saw 130mph as he flipped on his lights and siren and stomped on the gas.

To his appreciation and surprise, he saw the brake lights of the vehicle ahead light up and in another minute he was pulling to a stop behind the lead-foot. His appreciation grew as he stalked forward with purpose. Had the driver chosen to ignore his lights, he could have outdistanced the state trooper in a matter of seconds. Warily, Linker unsnapped his holster as he approached; _who would be driving such a vehicle, speeding toward the cities at this hour of the morning?_

He stepped up, ready to deliver a stern lecture along with a ticket as the driver's window silently slipped down and he found himself glaring into a surprisingly young and lovely face, made all the more surprising for the way she was glaring angrily back at him.

"License and reg-" he began as she cut him off in mid bark.

"Officer, while I appreciate your diligence I really have to get this man back to headquarters by dawn!"

"-istration…" at this point, Linker focused on the document she was holding up for his inspection. It was not a driver's license but an identification badge. _Oh Christ, the hottie is FBI._

"I've got him cuffed," she nodded toward the man slumped in the passenger seat. "But if he comes to before I get back to St. Paul, things could get difficult, so if you don't mind? We all have work to do."

"OH. Uh…" Linker glanced again at the passenger and saw that the unconscious young man's hands were indeed cuffed in his lap. _She should've cuffed his hands in back. She must have cuffed him after she got him in the car. How DID she get him in the car? _"What did you do to him?"

"I'd rather not say." She smiled. It was not a sweet smile; it made a shiver run up Linker's spine. _Relax. it's three a.m. vampires aren't real. And if they were, they wouldn't be FBI. I don't think. _

"Yes ma'am." He nodded, wanting to get away from the sports car as quickly as possible. "Would you, um… like an escort?"

"Really?" she glanced back at his car. "In that? Thanks but I'm in a hurry, here."

"Of course." He stepped back as her window slid up and felt a surge of relief as the engine purred back to life. He watched from the shoulder as she took off. He shook his head again and frowned. He thought he heard laughter as the bright yellow Ferrari vanished into the distance, heading south to the cities.

* * *

After Labor Day, Minneapolis changed. With school back in session, the lakes, beaches and parks were suddenly abandoned. The carnival atmosphere that had prevailed since Logan and Veronica had moved to town vanished overnight, leaving behind a beautiful, pastoral landscape to be enjoyed in peace and quiet by those fortunate enough to have escaped the nine to five grind. Logan felt as though the lakes were now his private domain. There were mornings where he was the only surfer on the water. He loved it.

Along with the nonstop party that is summertime in Minneapolis, the uncomfortable heat and humidity disappeared as though someone flipped a switch. Daytime temps remained comfortably in the eighties instead of climbing into the nineties, while night time dropped into the low seventies. September banished the oppressive humidity that had been constant since they moved to town and Veronica was happy to turn off the air conditioning and live with the windows open all the time.

"This feels more like home." She said one night, roasting a marshmallow on a stick over the fire pit on the patio. "Temperate days and cool evenings. Do we have any graham crackers or chocolate?"

"Nope; just the mallows." Logan said, watching her as she tried to eat the hot, sticky mess off her stick. "We've got some metal kebab skewers in the kitchen."

"Tastes better off a stick." She explained, pulling the center of her mallow off the stick with her fingers. "If you're gonna use a kebab, you might as well cook the marshmallow over a hotplate."

"Which you would never do?" he teased.

"I like to think those desperate days are behind me." She skewered another marshmallow.

"This weather is a lot more comfortable." Logan said, impaling a stay puft on his own stick. "I don't feel like I'm covered in saran wrap anymore, the air is clearer and I swear the lake is bluer."

"These Minnesotans are a cagey bunch. All we ever hear about are the winters." Veronica said, holding another mallow over the flame. "If the truth gets out, the entire country would move here!"

"Yeah..." Logan's mallow burst into flames and slid off his stick into the fire. He dropped the stick into the pit, leaned back on the couch and put his bare feet up on the ottoman. "I spent the afternoon on my board, got a fire, my girl, a good dinner and a carcinogenic dessert. Who could ask for more?"

"I know." Veronica agreed as she left the fire pit and dropped beside him on the couch. She popped her perfectly toasted mallow in her mouth. "Things are getting very interesting at work, too. I think we'll be moving on the Convention protestors soon."

"Gimme some of that…" Logan kissed her sticky mouth."The FBI is ready to pounce now that you gave them the final nail for the coffin?"

"Yeah, well …I just hope I get to be in on the kill."

"Why wouldn't you be?"

"It's a big agency, Sugarpants. I am but a grain of sand on the big beach of investigators."

"Bummer." He wasn't worried. Veronica's brilliance simply couldn't be ignored. Not even by a federal agency. He dropped an arm around her and let his eyes slide down to her throat. "I'm pretty sure we have chocolate sauce in the house…"

* * *

In September, the days fell into a rhythm. They had breakfast together on the patio, then Veronica went off to work while Logan spent his mornings outdoors and his afternoons in the library, working.

Three days a week, he and JR worked out with the kickboxing coach and every day he spent hours on his bike, surf board or one of the kayaks JR had recently added to their armada. From Cedar Lake outside their front door, Logan had access to the channel, Lake of the Isles, the lagoon and Lake Calhoun. He had plotted a course that would maximize the available water and provide a killer upper body work out. He encouraged JR to use a kayak as well, telling the scrawnier young man that a little more weight in his arms and shoulders would be an asset.

"I don't know, Admiral." JR said, looking in dismay at the one man craft. "It kind of defeats our entire purpose if I wind up looking like muscle."

Logan looked JR up and down.

"Worried about that, are you?" Logan's one raised eyebrow expressed all the sarcasm absent from his voice.

"Yeah, not really." JR sadly shook his head.

* * *

Veronica stood in the large conference room, her dismay growing. As Section Chief Larson outlined the planned events of the coming days, it became apparent that she, Tuski and Morris were invited into the loop only as a courtesy; a 'thank you' for the final bit of detail work that helped everything else drop into place.

None of them were going to be involved in the coming raids or arrests.

_I shouldn't be surprised. _Veronica told herself, trying to tamp down her disappointment as Larson outlined the plan to descend in simultaneous force on the homes and offices of six different targets in the twin cities. _These agents have been working this case for two years. They've put hundreds…thousands of hours into this bust. We came in this summer and found the bow to tie it all up, that's all. I just hoped…_

She sighed. She had hoped her part in this would be her ticket out of the bullpen.

She elbowed Tuski and nodded toward Shep, on the other side of the room in a knot of agents.

"Look at him, all serious and ready to kick some ass." Veronica said under her breath. Tuski grinned and answered "Hot."

The scope of the raids was huge; in addition to the six targets here in town, two would be taken in Chicago, all at precisely 7:00 a.m. so none of the suspects would have time or opportunity to warn the others. Each home and office would be thoroughly searched, so each address was already assigned teams of eight to fifteen agents.

The more impressed by the operation she became, the more it chaffed Veronica that she would have no active hand in it. By the time the briefing was done, it seemed like she, Tuski and Morris were the only agents in the entire Midwest to be excluded from the coming raid.

"Well the wrath of God and J. Edgar is about to descend on those poor schlubs." Tuski said as they returned to their desks afterward.

"It's a righteous wrath." Veronica said. "I wish we were going along."

"Cheer up!" Tuski grinned. "I'm sure they'll let us process some of the paper work after the dust has settled."

"Goody." Veronica watched Shep and the other more senior agents as they left the conference room and went back to their offices to finalize their preparations. She sat down at her work station and looked at Tuski. "I know being cute won't get us out of the office," she said to the other rookie, "But I kinda hoped that a few years of investigative experience might help."

"It will." Tuski assured her. "You know they expect all agents to pay their dues doing the grunt jobs."

"I know. And I don't even mind doing background. In fact, it's fascinating. I just know I could be doing so much more!" Veronica said.

"Be patient, Mars." Morris said from his desk. "You're already a few years ahead of the game; they took you straight out of school and not even grad school. I have a Master's degree in accounting. Eventually, I hope to be snooping through the financial records of some big time miscreants but I've no desire to chase them through dark alleys, trading gunfire. I mean look at me; physical intimidation isn't in my repertoire. I know we have to learn the mechanics of the bureau and you gotta start somewhere."

"I can do these in my sleep." Veronica said. "I've been doing checks like this since before I could drive."

"And I can spot a financial discrepancy in a ledger from across a room." Morris agreed. "But here we are, looking up the arrest records of Antonio Alvarez and Mo 'Da Boss' Flloyd. They'll get around to us, eventually."

"I think this whole 'bullpen' experience is a psychological test." Tuski put in. "They want to see how long before we break, working under Blythe."

"I hope you're right!" Veronica said. "That would explain _so much_."

"If you need things explained to you, Mars" barked Agent Blythe, who had a disconcerting way of appearing unexpectedly. "Perhaps we made a mistake taking you right out of school. I've always considered the college program a bad idea. It's not like ROTC. We have standards that cause your type problems."

"My _type_?" Veronica's plan not to engage flew out the window as quickly as the words flew off her tongue.

"_Private Investigators."_ Blythe spat, contemptuously. She said the words as though they'd been rolled in dog shit.

"Oh, them." Veronica nodded in understanding. Then she smiled sweetly and added "I thought you meant young blond women and I was thinking 'whoa, did this work environment just get _hostile_?' I'm so glad you cleared that up."

Blythe straightened defensively at the suggestion of harassment. Her eyes slid around to the other two agents, witnessing the exchange.

"Get back to work, all of you." She sniffed before turning on her heel and stalking off across the office.

"She is _such_ an Agent in Charge of Unnecessarily Nasty Treatment!" Tuski said as the battle axe disappeared.

"What, her?" Veronica said breezily as she logged onto her computer. "The dogs bark, kids but the caravan keeps on rolling."

* * *

"I don't _like_ fucking beer." Candy whined. He, Logan and JR were playing H.O.R.S.E. in the driveway.

"Ah, you're just supposed to _drink_ it." Logan said, watching JR make a shot from beneath the trees.

That made Candy giggle but he complained, "It tastes like piss."

"Really?" JR asked, curious. "I would have thought piss would be saltier. Are you talking horse piss, dog piss or my piss?"

"Anyone told you you're disgusting?" Candy glared at him as he bounced the rebound back to Logan.

"You're the urine connoisseur." JR goaded him. "Or is it some other bodily fluid you're thinking of?"

"_Shut up!"_ Candy raised a fist, threateningly. "Shut your mouth or you'll get a fist sandwich!"

Both JR and Logan stared at him for a beat before going off in gales of laughter.

"What?" Candy demanded indignantly, which just made the others laugh harder. Finally, he smiled and shrugged, accepting the absurdity of his threat. "Yeah, okay."

"All guys like beer." Logan insisted, wiping his eyes. He stepped beneath the tree and eyed his shot. "You just haven't found your brew yet. What do you drink?"

"Uh…Miller, Rolling Rock, Grain Belt…" Candy ticked off beer labels as he recovered Logan's rebound and walked toward the trees.

"Jeez." JR grimaced. "Horse piss, dog piss and…"

"You're not helping." Logan cut his henchman off. "Maybe you just don't like domestic pilsners. Try some ales or lager…stout, even."

"You're kidding." JR looked at him. "You should try mead. I'll bet mead is more your style."

"Like you know fuck-all about my style." Candy hissed at him as he threw up a brick.

"You'd drink bathwater if I stuck a tiny pink umbrella in it!" JR accused as he went for the ball as it rebounded off a garage door.

"I'll stick my pink umbrella in your girlfriend's bathwater!" Candy shot back. His retort didn't have the impact he was looking for; JR burst out laughing again and Logan bit back a grin.

"Your tiny pink umbrella?" Logan smirked.

"My girlfriend would rip off your umbrella and beat you over the head with it." JR added as he tried to make a shot from the grass.

"Oh, whatever." Candy frowned as he grabbed the ball and went to take his shot. "I still don't like beer."

"Man up." Logan said. "Drink it anyway; it's good for you."

"It is not." Candy said as he threw up an air ball. "It's full of carbs, makes you fat and has no nutritional value at all."

"It has other values." Logan said, grabbing the rebound. "Did I miss a turn? What is that, 'S'?"

"Yeah." JR nodded.

"Nuh- ah." Candy shook his head. "It's 'R', I made that shot from the third door."

"Cheater!" JR cried. "You haven't made a shot yet!"

"What values?" Candy asked Logan.

"Well, for starters it'll put some hair on your…umbrella. Go out. Get hammered. Waking up in a puddle of vomit in a stranger's back yard builds character." Logan said, taking another shot.

"Only _then_," JR stuck his finger in Candy's face, "will you be a man."

"That's completely stupid." Candy batted JR's hand away.

"If you're not willing to embrace stupidity, you'll never be a regular guy. Pretty much most of that is being completely stupid." Logan explained. "Look at me; I do a dozen stupid things a day."

"Don't sell yourself short, Admiral;" JR said. "You do at least fifteen stupid things a day."

"First and foremost being that I haven't fired you, yet?"

"Moneybags is nobody's role model, Alice." JR said, picking up the ball. "He's a spoiled brat who has always been able to buy his way out of any trouble he got into."

"Really? Cool." Candy grinned.

"Everybody keeps saying that!" Logan knocked the ball out of JR's hands. "I hardly ever _bought_ my way out of trouble; most of it required plea bargaining."

"Really?" Candy's eyebrows flew up.

"Most guys never see the inside of a police cruiser or a jail cell," JR assured Candy. "And guys who look like you really ought to steer clear of situations involving community soap."

"Yeah, I don't think I'd do well in jail." Candy shuddered.

"Are you kidding?" Logan said, incredulously. "You'd sell like hot cakes!"

"I personally have never awakened in a pool of vomit." JR said, ticking off on his fingers, "Don't drink and drive, stay away from contraband, try not to get in any more fights and you don't have to worry about jail. It's not that complicated."

"_Don't_ drink and drive, stay _away_ from contraband and try_ not_ to get in fights…" Logan echoed JR. "Jeez, I'll bet you were fun in high school."

"Like you had so much fun in high school?" JR shot back.

"Don't confuse 'being fun' with 'having fun' and at least I _tried_."

"How'd that work out for you?"

"I didn't have any fun in high school." Candy scowled. "It was _so_ boring, I hate sports and my skin was terrible. The one time I made out with a chick, I tried to undo her bra and she almost broke my jaw."

"Dude!" Logan laughed. "Read your audience!"

"Oh, she wanted to make out, she just got pissed at me cuz I broke the thingy…the lock on it."

"Her bra had a lock on it?" Both JR and Logan stared at Candy.

"I don't know!" He threw his hands up, helplessly. "It might as well have; I couldn't get the stupid thing open. How do you work those things, anyway? Some of them hook in front, some in back and I swear some are pullovers. How do you even know what you're working with?"

He and JR both looked expectantly at Logan. He looked blankly at both of them. "I don't know. That was never my thing."

"_What?"_ Both JR and Candy looked incredulous. Logan looked innocent and shook his head.

"No way." JR said, shaking his head.

"What do you mean, 'no way'?" Logan asked, amused. "Why's that so hard to believe?"

"I'm completely disillusioned." Candy said, crestfallen.

"You mean to tell me that the great Logan Ech…" JR stared to laugh. "That with all the women you had, you never learned to take off a bra?"

"I never had to," Logan said with a shrug as he started for the house. "They always took 'em off themselves the second we were alone."

* * *

Veronica came into the kitchen that evening, dropping her bag and holster on the counter. She could hear raucous laughter in the living room. Smiling, she walked on through only to stop dead in her tracks at the sight of Candy and JR, shirtless, trying to unhook the bras they were each wearing, as Logan rolled with laughter on the couch.

Candy slapped JR's hands as he fumbled at the front snap of the pale pink number he was wearing.

"Oh! Oh, there's hitting now?" JR protested angrily. "You better hope there's not hitting!"

"You're gonna rip it!" Candy shrilled back.

"ARE THOSE MINE?" Veronica loudly demanded. All three young men snapped their heads around to gawk at her.

"NO!" JR and Candy cried, leaping away from each other as though thrown by an electric current. JR instinctively clapped his hands over his chest then crossed his arms in an attempt to hide the bra while feigning nonchalance but Candy just put his hands on his hips, his lip curled in disgust at the whole situation rather than his attire.

"Of course not." Logan assured her, sitting up. "I'd never let these idiots touch your delicates. They'd never fit."

"We got them at…" JR started to explain but she cut him off with a raised hand.

"For the first time in my entire life," she told them, backing toward the stairway "I don't want to know."

* * *

Just a few days after the raids, Veronica stepped onto the elevator and found herself face to face with Section Chief Larson. She'd had no intention of bothering him again about OCB during the tense lead up to the operation but with the raids over, the entire office was giddy with the euphoria of success and Veronica had never been one to let opportunity knock in vain.

"Section Chief Larson," she said the moment the doors closed. "Have you had a chance to talk to anyone at OCB about my inquiries?"

"Your inquiries?" He looked taken aback.

"You said you'd put me in touch with someone at OCB who could help me get a line on a certain Russian mobster."

"Did I?"

"Yes." She nodded firmly. "You said you'd make some calls. Did you? Make the calls?"

"You asked me to call OCB for you." He said it so flatly she wasn't sure if he was asking or remembering.

"Yes. It was the day I brought you the AAAN connection that tied this week's targets to each other."

"I've been pretty busy."

"Yes, and I must say, it's been an education watching this office work! I can't tell you how impressive it was to see that massive raid come off like clockwork!" She shook her head in amazement. "Eight targets in two states, coordinating over a hundred agents; the logistics alone must have been a nightmare but you made it look easy. There really is no substitute for preparation."

"It's what we do, Mars." He said with a slight smile. "It's been a good week."

"It restores my faith in the system to know we have men like you in charge." She gushed.

"You had me till right there." He grimaced, raising a finger.

"Too much?" she said chagrinned. "I wasn't sure how far I could go with a pro like you."

"You have to walk that fine line between flattery and brown nosing."

"Some bureaucrats like the brown nosing." She shrugged, unapologetic at having her methods so exposed.

"That's true." He acknowledged. "And you did a good job; you phrased everything as though I had already agreed to help you out. As though I had promised you results, when in fact, I only said I'd ask. You reminded me of your own contribution to this week's raids and you didn't make the rookie mistake of trying to convince me how important this is to you; most people aren't impressed by the troubles of others. You focused on what's important to _me_."

"And what's that?"

"Personal integrity. Honoring my word."

"So have you made those calls like you _said_ you would?"

"And you're still doing it."

"Is it working? Wouldn't it be worth it to do what I ask just to get me out of your hair?"

"You're very persistent."

"You have no idea. Did you make the calls?"

"Calls?"

"OCB. I understand how busy you are, sir. If it makes things easier, you could just give me the numbers. I'll make the calls myself, I don't mind. In fact, it would probably simplify things if you just gave me some names."

"I'll make the calls, Mars." Larson said as the elevator doors opened. "You'd never get through."

"So when can I expect to hear from OCB?" she asked as he stepped off.

"I'll make the calls; I never promised they'll talk to you."

"Thank you, sir. I knew I could count on you." She smiled broadly as the doors began to close.

"Mars?" he stopped the doors from closing.

"Yes, sir?"

"I can stand a little brown nosing but I really hate being called a bureaucrat."

"I'll remember that, sir." She said cocking her head to one side.

_I'm sure you will._ Larson thought as he watched the doors close again.

* * *

Logan, JR and Candy sat at the round poker table in the lower level. The great room was so big that the boxing ring and gym only took up two thirds of the space so Logan planned to turn the end near the stairs into a man cave. The full bath and showers under the stairs meant it would be easy enough to install a wet bar. So far, all they had was the poker table and leather chairs. Cabinets for cards, games, chips and dvds would be built as a room divider. Logan hadn't decided yet if he wanted to install another flat screen to watch games on this side of the room but he was leaning heavily toward 'yes'.

The lower level was continually evolving. The only part he and Veronica left alone was the home theater on the other side of the stairs. It was already perfect; a fifteen foot screen, Boze surround sound system, three tiers of comfortable seating, acoustically draped walls and art deco sconces and a popcorn machine. Veronica pointed out that they could have screenings with up to a dozen or even fifteen people, once they knew a dozen people.

Logan liked it best when it was just the two of them, watching movies in the dark, reclining on a leather sofa, spilling popcorn. Veronica had reminded him on more than one occasion that since they were married now and had a whole house to romp in, they didn't have to make out at the movies anymore but it was kind of a reflex with him.

Either way, the movie theater was their favorite room in the house.

At the moment, the three young men were seated at the poker table in the budding game room, playing Texas hold 'em and sampling dark beers. JR had picked up bottles of different styles of beer and Candy was trying to find a brew he liked.

Logan was trying to win all their money.

"I thought you were good at this," JR said, raking in another pot.

"I am." Logan insisted, in the face of all evidence to the contrary. "But most of my gambling is done on a larger scale these days."

"Like what?" Candy asked, dealing another hand. "Stock market? World Cup Soccer?"

"Don't know shit about soccer; my money's in football." Logan picked up his cards.

"You don't know shit about football," JR snorted.

"I know enough to have fun with my fantasy team, same as you." Logan answered. "What do you think of this stuff?" he asked Candy. They were drinking shots of the five different beers that JR had stocked up on.

"I like this one." Candy picked up a dark, foamy brew.

"Guinness." JR said, surprised.

"Isnt' that what you drink?" Logan needled him. He didn't wait for JR's response but asked Candy "Where's the best place to get a haircut around here?"

"I'll find out." JR said, affronted.

"I'll cut your hair." Candy offered. "I'd give you a great cut!"

"A great _clip_, maybe." JR scoffed. "I'll get you an appointment somewhere good, Admiral."

"I can do it." Candy insisted. "Let me cut your hair, I'll show you."

"Dude, I'm not letting you touch my hair." Logan growled around the stub of the unlit cigar in his mouth. "Only licensed professionals touch my hair."

"Any hack can get a license; I would do a great job!"

"Any hack may be able to get a license but they can't touch this head."

"Calm down, Candy. Don't worry; I'll find a place." JR looked at his cards and winced. "I'm out."

"Seriously. Let me cut your hair." Candy leaned forward, intently. "I can do it. I gave Parker an awesome cut, I can give you one, too."

"I don't want some cheesy hip, skater boi hair cut." Logan told him. "I like it clean and simple."

"I know." Candy shook his head, offended. "I know what it looked like when you first got to town. It's way too shaggy now; you never should have let it get this bad. I can fix it!"

"No." Logan looked at his cards and placed his bet.

"I'm all in." Candy pushed his small pile of chips into the center of the table.

"Fine," Logan began to count chips but Candy stopped him.

"Uh uh; your hair."

"You're putting up…seventy five bucks against cutting my hair?" the cigar drooped in Logan's mouth.

"It's a win/win for you." Candy pushed. "If you win, you get the money and if I win you get the best cut you've ever had."

Logan looked at his hand and grinned. "Call." He said, sitting back in his chair. JR dealt the river.

* * *

Veronica dropped her stuff on the kitchen island and followed the video soundtrack into the living room to find her husband.

"What, no lingerie models today?" She tumbled over the back of the couch landing on her back with her head in his lap as a greeting.

"Hey!" he laughed, dropping his controller.

"Today was a good day!" she grinned up at him as she stretched out. "Everyone's mood is upbeat. The raid went down without a hitch, we've got a half dozen suspects we get to mess with until they turn on each other…it's fun to be on the winning side!"

Logan put his feet up on the coffee table and listened intently as his wife described the day's events to him, finishing with the conversation on the elevator.

"I'm tired of Larson's timeline so I gave it a bump. If nothing happens tomorrow, he gets another nudge…"

"Then what? After bump, nudge, poke and shove, what are your options? Taking hostages?"

"I have a feeling it won't get that far. I think I made the case that he's better off giving me what I want than not. Heck, he may even let me talk to some of our recently acquired suspects."

"You think it's a good idea to stomp on the toes of agents who've been working this thing since '08?"

"No… But it couldn't hurt to offer any and all assistance to those agents, could it? After all, unlike most rookies, I have years of experience wheedling info out of people who would rather keep it to themselves. They should want to use me, shouldn't they?"

"I would think."_ I want to use you._

"Hey." She sat up and looked at him, noticing his new hair cut. "Looking good!" She ruffled the top of his head. "Where did you wind up going?"

"Do you like it?"

"Let me see; turn your head." He turned his head to either side while Veronica admired his much shorter hair, running her fingers through it. "Yeahh...it looks _great. _So where'd you go and how much does a top salon charge around here?"

"Uh…seventy five and bragging rights."

"Bragging rights?" she cocked her head and looked at him. "Those are worth a buck and a quarter?"

"They are to Candy." Logan looked sheepish. Veronica's mouth dropped open.

"You let _Candy_ cut your hair?" she gasped.

"I didn't exactly _let_ him," Logan admitted, ruefully. "I kinda lost a bet."

"Omigod!" she laughed. "You're lucky he didn't shave your head! Ooh, that might've been _hot_…"

"Don't drag me into your daddy issues, please." Logan groaned.

"I told you never to bet anything you can't afford to lose!" she guffawed.

"I thought you liked it?" he looked worried.

"Oh…yes, I do!" She ran her fingers through his newly shorn locks again. "I like it a lot! Not a bad bet, at all!"

"Me too. I was really nervous, though."

"Really?" her eyebrow crept up. "Did he run his hands through your hair," her voice dropped to a seductive level as she went on, "looking in the mirror, all cheek to cheek, combing it, letting it fall through his fingers, whispering how good it will be, soothing your nerves and helping you relax?"

"No, he told me to quit being a fucking baby and hold still if I didn't want to get stabbed in the head."

"Oh." Veronica pouted, disappointed. "Candy is just full of surprises."

"But it's a good cut?"

"Yeah, it's a great cut."

"I really think Candy should get into the Aveda Institute."

* * *

"Mars," Blythe barked as she strode across the bullpen. "Section Chief Larson's office, _now_."

"Are you in trouble?" Tuski asked. "Not that I'd be surprised."

"No!" Veronica said as she closed the file she was working on and stood. "Not that I'd be surprised. But I haven't exactly had a chance to get in trouble."

She schooled her expression to show absolutely none of the excitement she felt. She was sure she was finally going to get the information she needed about a contact at OCB. _Gory Sorokin, come on down. _She thought as she knocked on the door.

Larson waved her to a seat as he finished the phone call he was on. There was another man in the office, whom Veronica had seen on rare occasions. He was looking through a file and seemed oblivious to her entrance.

"One and two have already lawyered up," Larson said into the phone. "Don't let three and four talk to each other. Fine."

Veronica looked expectantly at him as he hung up the phone.

He stared back for a long moment. He didn't introduce the other man or even acknowledge him in any way.

"Mars, do you know anything about an FBI agent using the manager's office at First Avenue to interrogate a suspect?" he suddenly asked.

"A suspect regarding what, sir?" she asked, without missing a beat.

"I thought you could tell me."

"No." She looked mildly disinterested.

"When I get reports of a young, blond FBI agent, you come to mind."

"Oh? Am I the only blond in the office, sir? I could swear I've seen several. This is Minnesota, after all."

"Have you been to First Ave?"

"As a matter of fact, I have. I wasn't the only blond there, either."

Larson stared at her.

She stared right back.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the other man dip his head lower into the file he was studying so intently that she couldn't see his expression.

"We've also had reports from state troopers of a yellow Ferrari doing well over 100mph. The reports said the car was driven by a young woman with FBI credentials." Larson tossed at her.

"My Audi is in the lot, Sir." Veronica answered, bored. "I doubt that even a state trooper could mistake it for a Ferrari."

Larson stared at her.

She stared right back.

After a silence that lasted somewhere between thirty seconds and twenty minutes, Larson suddenly frowned and leaned back in his chair.

"You know anything about fine art, Mars?"

"Not really." She replied, allowing herself to relax slightly. "I know that an artist's work increases greatly in value after death; that in the rare cases in the past, artists have been murdered to maximize the value of existing work; that in the eighties, fine art was used to launder money, mostly in drug related operations but also as a way for multinational corporations to get around international regulations regarding compensation and tax laws but as far as the art itself, sir? Not much."

"You know about the art scams of the eighties?" Larson's eyebrows went up. "You weren't even born yet."

"Art was used as currency during WWII, as well sir. If my history is correct, neither of us were born yet."

"So you're aware of how art can be used to hide assets?"

"I know that art is fungible, much easier bought, sold, insured and transported than say, gold or heroin. It's been used to get large amounts of money from point A to point B in a hidden form. My father once helped a client get out of town with eight million dollars hidden in a tacky plastic picture frame."

"In other words, the perfect instrument for giving a veneer of respectability to ill gotten gains."

"Yes, sir."

Larson turned his head slightly and said "What do you think?"

The man in the corner nodded once and placed the file he'd been reading on Larson's desk. Larson opened it.

"There's a money laundering operation going on in the country at present that is using fine art as a cover. We believe it's drug money being used to buy works through third parties, then when they turn around and sell the pieces at prices their own bidding pushed up to unreasonably inflated prices, their ill gotten profits are squeaky clean."

"Easy way to move their fortunes across international borders, too." Veronica said thoughtfully.

"Exactly." Larson smiled.

"Are they using the work of established artists or are they actually creating new superstars of the art world?"

"I presume they're using known artists." Larson frowned. "Who would pay millions for the work of an unknown?"

"It's art, sir." Veronica said, raising and eyebrow and thinking of the ugly canvases that had hung all over Logan's home growing up. "A piece is worth exactly what someone will pay for it and if an artist sells an installation or canvas for a million dollars, the next one will fetch even more. Everyone wants to be in on the next big craze. Buy a new master's work for a mere hundred grand this year, sell it for a million next year; the sellers get rich, the buyers get to be cutting edge and who's to say anyone has perpetrated a fraud? It's art."

"That's part of what makes it so difficult." Larson nodded. "And the players in this particular game of three card monte are a private bunch. The auctions are exclusive affairs, the sales and prices reported for tax purposes but it's been impossible to find out who's participating. Only the eventual buyers names turn up in the reports so we don't know who may be bidding up the prices. We've been waiting for an opportunity to get a closer look at one of those auctions for a while now and that's where you come in."

"Sir?" Veronica tried not to let her excitement show.

"There's going to be one of those private, high stakes auctions held here in town in a few weeks. The Art Institute is hosting but it's a closed door, very upscale affair, disguised as a fund raiser. Entry fee, donation, whatever is a grand a head. We've known for a while that the best way to get a feel for what's going on at those things is to get someone inside. We think you're perfect for the job."

Veronica felt a hot flush as adrenaline flooded her system. She tried not to grin as Larson continued.

"You're a fresh face, so your cover would be air tight. No chance anyone could make you as an agent. It's not a dangerous assignment; all you'd be doing is observing for future identification. We have an expert who will be able to give you a quick tutorial on art history and different…I don't know; art shit. You'll be able to pass as someone who belongs. Best of all, you'll be able to get your hands on a catalogue ahead of time. That's been the catch, all along. Once we know exactly what the pieces are that are being offered, our experts will be able to develop a more in depth theory on how this whole operation works and whether or not they're committing fraud along with laundering…"

"Excuse me," Veronica broke in, a crease between her brows. "but how will _I_ be able to get my hands on a catalogue?"

"You can get on the mailing list. As a known art collector, no one will even raise an eyebrow."

"I'm a known art collector?" Veronica shook her head, wondering if Larson was nuts.

"Well, maybe not you but your husband; Logan Echolls."

To be continued...


	28. Chapter 28  Speak Now

Chapter 28 Speak Now

"_What?"_ Veronica was surprised to hear her own voice sounding so cool and quiet because inside her head, she was screaming bloody murder. "My husband's name is Logan Mars."

"We know what name he's going by but the fact remains that he_ is_ Logan Echolls…" Larson frowned at the look on his young agent's face. "We're the FBI, Mars. Of _course_ we know who you married."

Veronica pressed her lips together tightly, to keep her mouth from gaping in dismay. "Does _everyone_ know?" she asked.

"Not unless you told them." Larson answered. "We're in the information gathering business, Mars. We're not gossips. In fact, we're supposed to be pretty good at keeping secrets. As far as I know, the only people in the office who are aware of your husband's true identity are in this room."

Veronica closed her eyes and gripped the arms of the chair she was sitting in for a moment. When she opened her eyes, she shot blazing death rays at her Section Chief.

"You're offering me this assignment because of my marriage?" she asked in a quiet, steady voice that would've scared the holy hell out of anyone who knew her.

"Not entirely but it does work in your favor." Larson said with a half shrug. "We may have been able to insert an agent into that world anyway but with your, or I should say _your husband's_ name recognition, it's a lock. Not only will no one think twice about you being there, they may not even notice you."

"I'll be so overshadowed by my famous better half?" an eyebrow ticked up into the red zone.

"Oh, I doubt if you would exactly be overshadowed, Mars. You tend to stand out. I just meant that you'll fit right in with the rich and glamorous crowd, whereas most of our agents would look out of place and uncomfortable in such a diamond setting."

A thick, sticky silence descended over the office as Veronica felt something hot and tight, coiling in her guts. She took a deep breath.

"Do you really think that I would use my husband to further my career?" she quietly demanded. "Did you ever stop and consider _why_ he took my name? You're the FBI; you must have some idea of the hell that the last few years have been for him yet you sit there and blithely ask that he throw away his new found anonymity for some stupid, preliminary investigation?"

"There's nothing stupid about this investigation, Mars. We're talking about hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of dollars in drug money, tax evasion, maybe even a cover for arms dealing. As for preliminary; all investigations have to start somewhere. I'm offering you a chance to be the primary agent in a potentially huge, career making case."

"Even if I knew for a fact that we'd be taking down Ahmadinejad," Her voice had risen slightly and was cold as ice. "I wouldn't use Logan to do it."

"We're…" Larson tried to reason with her but she rolled right over him.

"I can't believe you thought I would." Her voice came out like a whip. "The world is full of people who think I married him for _money_ or _fame_ or some other bogus, worthless, _stupid_ reason and they can all go hang themselves. And so can you." She stood up but she wasn't finished with them yet. "You don't know me yet so I'm not that surprised that you think I could be selfish enough to ask him to throw away the one thing money couldn't buy him; his privacy. But let me tell you right now; I _did _marry him for selfish reasons. I wanted him all to myself and I'm not about to share him with E!, or the tabloids or the _Fucking_ _Bureau of Investigation_!" At this point, she placed both hands on the desk and leaned forward, menacingly. "And if that means I spend the rest of my career in the bullpen running background checks, believe me; _I've been through worse!"_

She drew herself to her full height and glared down at Larson before turning on her heel and marching to the door. As she yanked it open, she threw "Nice to see you again, Special Agent Waletski" over her shoulder like a Molotov cocktail and slammed the door behind her.

She stormed past Larson's assistant's desk without a glance, too angry to even notice the curious glances (FBI agents are trained not to stare) of the people working at the desks in the open lobby. A rookie agent slamming out of the Section Chief's office with blood in her eyes was a new experience for all of them.

Two male agents at the coffee machine watched in amazement as she sailed past the elevator and almost yanked the door to the stairs off its hinges. As the door swung closed and they heard her angry descent, one looked at the other and said "Be afraid. Be very afraid."

"I think I'm in love," said the other, still staring at the stair well door.

* * *

Stomping down two flights of stairs did nothing to assuage Veronica's anger but it did give her time to compose herself. Years of practice had enabled her to present a veneer of complacency even as she raged and boiled inside. She drew a deep breath before exiting the stair well.

"So, what's up?" Tuski asked without looking up from her monitor as Veronica reached her desk. "You in trouble?" She glanced over at the younger woman and frowned. "Shit. You are in trouble."

"Hunh." Veronica bit off a laugh and looked at her friend. "I think…I think I may have just quit."

"Girl, how much trouble _you in_?" Tuski asked. "What the hell did you do?"

"It's all sort of hazy but I think…_I may_ have just told Section Chief Larson to go fuck himself."

"No." Tuski couldn't help it. She giggled. "No way."

"You _'may'_ have?" Morris turned around. "You're not_ sure_?"

"I was…kind of…stirred up."

"Damn." Morris said. "If I ever told the brass to fuck off, I'd want to remember doing it."

"What _happened_?" Tuski asked, dropping her voice to a whisper. "Why in hell tell the SC to fuck off when you've never told the ACUNT?"

"Turns out Blythe was right." Veronica sneered. "Being cute won't get me out of the bullpen. But being rich might."

* * *

Larson and Waletski stared after Agent Mars as she slammed the door behind her. Wally turned and looked at Larson, his eyes wide. The Section Chief was still staring at the door. "Ouch." he said.

"She sure beat the snot out of you." Wally nodded.

"Beat the snot out of you too, back there in the corner like the CSM, with her 'nice to see you, Agent Waletski'!" Larson spun his chair around to face his old friend.

"What do you want to bet she's run checks on every member of this office?"

"You'd lose." Larson shook his head. "She's too efficient for that. She's only run checks on those of us with a little power."

"What do you want to bet she'll have run checks on everyone by Christmas?"

"I was hoping she'd be too busy for that."

"She is one cool customer. She looked you right in the eye and lied through her teeth." Wally marveled.

"Actually," Larson said, thoughtfully. "You weren't listening as carefully as I was. Every word she said was true. They were all non sequitors but she never lied, not once."

"Good; then I don't have to feel like such an idiot for believing her even though I knew she was lying. That girl could rock in the field." Wally said in awe struck tones. "Did she tell us to fuck off?"

"No." Larson said, after thinking back for a moment. Then he grinned again. "But she really wanted to!"

"Did she really commandeer Conrad's office?"

"He told me it was a hot blond with creds." Larson had lived in the Twin Cities his whole life. He knew _everyone_.

"Could've been some babe with fakes." Wally suggested.

"Said she was little but scary as hell."

"Oh, it was Mars, alright." Wally nodded. "Damn."

"And now she's pissed at me." Larson chuckled. "Who knew the girl would object to a glitzy night on the town with her new husband on the feds dime?"

"Actually…" Wally looked speculative. "I should have known."

Larson looked up at him, his eyebrows raised. "How? Her psych eval tells us she's extremely goal oriented." Larson flipped open another file folder on his desk and read, "She's ambitious, resourceful, manipulative and ruthless. She thinks she's the smartest person in the room and 95% of the time, she's right. She should have leapt at this chance. In her whole career, she's never hesitated to use anything or anyone that might further her objective. Hell, she threw her own dad under the bus to get the Kane kid out of the country."

"But not _Echolls._" Wally explained. "Never him. I should have seen this coming. This is just the sort of thing I ran into in Neptune; everyone who knows the guy reacted like that. When even the street thugs who have every reason in the world to hate his guts are protective, I should've expected the woman he married to be ready to go super nova before letting anyone put him on the front line."

"But.."

"NO. Listen; my mistake was looking at her profile and his separately. I should have considered them together."

"So this cluster fuck is your fault."

"Yeah." Wally sighed.

"Excellent! I'm blaming you in my report."

"Hey."

"Take your medicine, Wally; you fucked up and now I'm never gonna get to drive her hubby's car."

* * *

Veronica spent the rest of the work day attacking the OCB's firewalls. If she was only going to have the FBI's resources to track down Gory Sorokin for a few more hours, she was determined to make the best of it.

She cleared her mind of distractions and concentrated on the task at hand with the single mindedness she had perfected since Lily's death. She had learned to immerse herself so totally in her research that the outside world and even time itself just melted away. Attempting to sneak into the OCB's files, Veronica was in her happy place.

Tuski and Morris however, were useless basket cases the rest of the afternoon. They jumped every time Blythe came by, expecting the boom to fall. Their eyes flew to the elevator every time the doors opened and agents came and went. They were on tenterhooks all afternoon, waiting for someone to show up, demanding Veronica' badge and weapon.

By the end of the day, Tuski and Morris were as exhausted as their frayed nerve endings but Veronica's therapeutic snooping had helped her move on to peaceful acceptance.

"I've never need a drink so bad in my life." Tuski sighed on the elevator down to the lobby. "O'Garas?"

"Not today," Veronica shook her head. "I just want to go home."

"You seem to still be employed," Morris said to Veronica. "Do you think they're waiting for you downstairs?"

"I don't know." Veronica shrugged, and then squared her shoulders. "But if they want me out, they're gonna have to throw me. They can demand my badge but I have no intention of resigning."

"Okay." Tuski nodded as they stepped off the elevator. "So what are you gonna do?"

"Brazen it out." Veronica smiled. "Works every time."

* * *

She came across the lawn to see Logan seated on the patio. The table held a pitcher of beer and bowl of guacamole and chips. She grinned and pumped her fist from halfway across the yard. "Yes! I _knew_ marrying you was a good idea! How did you know I was gonna need these fortifications?"

"It's Friday. I've heard you working folks have some special affinity for this particular day of the week." He stood and poured her drink as she stepped onto the stone. She ignored the glass he offered her and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tightly. He looked slightly surprised but lifted his free hand to her hair. He was never going to argue with the idea of Veronica, pressed up against him.

"I love you_ so much_." She mumbled into his chest.

"Tough day in the salt mine?"

"Yes." She took the glass out of his and after long drink, dropped into the deeply cushioned seat, pulling him down beside her. "What'd you do all day, Doll Face?"

"Nothin."

"By 'nothin', I assume you mean you spent the morning on the water and the afternoon in your office, then made sure to gather all these provisions so as to greet me like the good little 1950's house wife you are?"

"Yep. 'Cept for the part about working in my office." He nodded toward the laptop on the end table. "It was so nice out; I worked out here all afternoon."

"Did you get a lot done?"

"I spent a lot of time staring into space and just being, so yes."

"I'd take a bullet for you, you know." She smiled.

"I'd rather you didn't." he replied. "I have dibs on any bullet-taking around here."

"You can't have dibs forever." She chided.

"Can too. Just because I look great in an apron and pearls doesn't mean I ever forget that job one is protecting you." He had that look on his face that turned her bones to jelly.

"I got in a screaming match with Larson today." She told him.

"Uh oh."

"And it wasn't so much a 'screaming match' as it was me; yelling at him."

"Isn't he your boss?" he looked more chagrinned than startled.

"Yep."

"Isn't that sort of thing frowned upon in the work place?"

"Yes!" she closed her eyes and laughed, in spite of herself.

"That's why I avoid the work place; the freedom to yell at anyone I like. So, what happened?"

"Nothing! Yet. If I were fired, they would've done it right away, wouldn't they?"

"I don't know. So…did he take the last donut? Leave the seat up? Why'd you yell at him?"

"Oh…" she groaned. "He made a suggestion I thought was completely out of line and I flipped."

"The silver fox?" Logan sat up as his voice took on a razor edge.

"No! Omigod, no!" Veronica suddenly laughed, realizing what her statement had sounded like. "We were disagreeing over how a particular investigation should be handled!"

"Oh." Logan relaxed a little. He looked at his wife and waited. "If you don't want to talk about it, we don't have to." He finally said.

"He knows about First Ave." she said, sheepishly.

"The FBI is aware of a Rock n Roll landmark that's been operating in our midst for the last thirty years?" Logan observed dryly while picking imaginary lint off his shirt. "That restores my faith in the federal government."

"Someone told him about us…taking over the manager's office."

"Oh! Do you think they got us on camera? 'Cus _there's_ a video I'd really like to see…"

"God, no! No!" Veronica looked momentarily horrified.

"Don't sell yourself short, Bobcat, you were _en fuego_ that night."

"How can you think I didn't check that office for surveillance before we..? No. They had no physical evidence." She relaxed again. "There's no proof."

"Then they don't really know anything, do they?" Logan mused. "They merely suspect. We can live with that. 'En Fuego' means on fire, right? Cuz you were _hot_."

"Aren't you the least bit concerned that my office is aware of our shenanigans?"

"No. I was under the impression that our marriage license made our shenanigans legal in all fifty states. Even Massachusetts and Iowa."

"And here I was, thinking you had a highly developed sense of privacy!"

"You're the one who dragged me into that office." He pointed out. "It may have been a whole different story if you'd tried to ravage me on the dance floor. Or not."

She looked at him and blinked. "Oh, it would have been a whole different story, all right."

He chuckled and gave her that look that made her bones melt again. "I heard a song on the radio today that made me think of you."

"She's a BRICK. Hawwwsse." Veronica sang, lifting her eyebrows.

"No."

"Lyin Ass Bitch?"

"Uh uh."

"Devil in a Blue Dress? Evil Woman? You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille?"

"You know, I actually _like _you."

"So what made you think of me?"

"Well, you _are_ the best thing that's ever been mine."

"Awww." Veronica cocked her head and smiled at him. "My boy's been listening to Taylor Swift! That's _precious_!"

"She's very wise for her years." He said, not the least embarrassed to be quoting a country singer who was two years younger than them.

"I've heard most of her songs are written from personal experience."

"Well, that's wise, isn't it?"

"Socrates said the wisest man in the world is the one who realizes he doesn't know anything." Veronica acquiesced.

"Socrates would've made a kick ass lyricist." Logan smirked. "Anyway, I heard that song and I was intrigued…I pulled a few strings and got this." He pushed a button on the Boze remote and music filled the air. "The cd doesn't drop until next month but it turns out I have clout."

"You're a lout?"

"Money talks, sugarpuss. Sometimes it even sings. Now shut up and listen to your bootleg download of Ms. Swift's newest opus."

They listened to the first cut, a song about a girl who was prone to run away and the boy who promised he'd never leave her alone.

"It's almost scary, isn't it?" Logan said, looking at Veronica.

"Yeah! If you'd ever actually had a job waiting tables, or doing anything at all for that matter, I'd think she'd been spying on us." Veronica teased.

Then the next song started.

_The way you move is like a full on rainstorm and I'm a house of cards.  
You're the kind of reckless that should send me running but I kinda know I won't get far  
And you stood there in front of me, just close enough to touch  
close enough to hope you couldn't see what I was thinking of_

_Drop everything now…_

"Oh my." Veronica listened in rapt attention as she was taken back to the balcony of the Camelot.

…_My mind forgets to remind me; you're a bad idea.  
You touch me once and it's really something you find I'm even better than you imagined I would be.  
I'm on my guard for the rest of the world but with you, I know it's no good.  
I could wait patiently but I really wish you would  
Drop everything now…_

"Oh my God!" Veronica's mouth fell open and she turned to Logan as the song continued.

…_Cuz I see sparks fly every time you smile.  
I run my fingers through your hair and watch the lights go wild..._

"_You_ had an affair with Taylor Swift!" Veronica teased, punching Logan on the shoulder.

"Not me!" he laughed, trying to protect himself from her onslaught.

"She just described you to a tee!"

…_Just wrong enough to make it feel right.  
Lead me up the stair case won't you whisper soft and slow…_

"My eyes aren't green. She's talking about some other sparkly guy."

…_I'm captivated by you baby, like a fireworks show…_

"That's _you! _That's totally you!" Veronica insisted. "When did you have _time?" _She peered around the yard, suspiciously._ "_Has she been stalking us?"

"I'm pretty sure you're the only one who sees me like that."

"Oh, Peaches. You have no idea." She pursed her lips and pinched his chin.

And then the next song started.

…_Your guard is up and I know why.  
_'_Cuz the last time you saw me is still burned in the back of your mind;  
You gave me roses and I left them there to die._

"O god." Veronica whispered, listening.

…_These days I haven't been sleeping, staying up playing back myself leaving  
When your birthday passed and I didn't call  
Then I think about summer, all the beautiful times  
I watched you laughing from the passenger side  
And realized I loved you in the fall…_

Unconsciously, Veronica's hand crept up over her mouth. It was still painful to remember freshman year and how she'd tortured him.

…_And then the cold came, the dark days when fear crept into my mind.  
You gave me all your love and all I gave you was goodbye…  
_

She looked at Logan, biting her lower lip, forced to remember the humiliation and heartache of those nights at the Neptune Grand; the night he told her he loved her and she hadn't answered…

_I miss your tan skin, your sweet smile  
So good to me, so right  
And how you held me in your arms that September night…_

…How a late night conversation with Piz had made her realize what she'd lost…

…_This is me swallowing my pride  
Standing in front of you saying I'm sorry for that night  
And I go back to December.  
Turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you  
Wishing I'd realized what I had when you were mine… _

…the night she'd left him as he had begged her to tell him what he could do to make things right…

…_Maybe this is wishful thinking  
Probably mindless dreaming  
But if we loved again, I swear I'd love you right.  
I'd go back in time and change it but I can't.  
So if the chain is on your door, I understand…_

…and the night she apologized and tried to come back. She reached out and took his hand as the song ended. He looked at her, surprised by the emotion on her face.

"I swear, this time I'll love you right." She said, dipping her head and leaning against his chest. He smiled and ran a hand through her hair.

"Nobody does it better." He assured her as the next song started.

…_I am not the kind of girl who should be rudely barging in on a white veil occasion but you are not the kind of boy who should be marrying the wrong girl…_

"Oh, this would totally have been me, if you'd tried to marry someone else." Veronica giggled as she refilled her glass.

"There's an occasion that would never have come up," Logan told her. "Believe me!"

…_Don't say yes, run away now.  
I'll meet you when you're out of the church at the back door.  
Don't wait or say a single vow  
Your time is running out and they said 'speak now'…_

"You would have come up with far more subtle ways to spike a wedding." Logan smirked. "It's a lot more likely that I would've had to do a Dustin Hoffman while you made the biggest mistake of your life with DK."

"Would you have?" she asked. "Please tell me you would have!"

…_I hear the preacher say 'speak now or forever hold your peace'  
There's the silence  
There's my last chance  
I stand up with shaky hands all eyes on me…_

"In a heartbeat." Logan assured her. "And my hands would've been steady as a surgeon's."

…_Horrified looks from everyone in the room but I'm only looking at you…_

"If I had ever tried to marry Duncan or _anyone_," Veronica said, going nose to nose with him, "and you had arrived in the back of the church and said 'let's go', I'd have gone with you. Dress, bouquet and all; I'd have turned right around and walked out the door with you."

"I know." He kissed her.

'Dear John' made them laugh, as neither of them were fans of John Mayer.

…_You are an expert at sorry and keeping lines blurry,  
never impressed by me acing your tests  
All the girls that you've run dry have tired lifeless eyes 'cuz you've burned them out  
But I stole your matches before fire could catch me  
So don't look now  
I'm shining like fireworks over your sad empty town…_

"How any guy has the balls to date her, I have no idea!" Veronica marveled.

…_The girl in the dress wrote you a song. You should have known…_

"Are you kidding?" Logan asked. "They're lined up _hoping_ to be the subject of her next song. She can call them crazy, egotistical and sadistic as long as she doesn't mention their lame ass music or tell the world they suck in bed."

"But you like it when I-"

"It's a guy thing." He topped off their beers again.

'Mean' made Veronica gasp and peek at Logan, who was listening intently.

…_Someday I'll be big enough so you can't hit me  
And all you're ever gonna be is mean.  
Why you gotta be so mean?_

"Yeah, that one's all mine." He grimaced as the song ended.

"Sure," she snorted. "No one was _ever_ mean to me."

By now completely intrigued, they listened as 'The Story of Us' filled the air.

…_I used to know my place was the spot next to you  
Now I'm searching the room for an empty seat  
'Cuz lately I don't even know what page you're on…_

"Are you sure this is a new song?" Veronica asked, "Cuz I'm pretty sure it was playing at that birthday party you threw for Parker."

…_Miscommunications lead to fall out  
So many things that I wish you knew  
So many walls up I can't break through…_

"My only memory of that night is all the screaming." He murmured.

"There wasn't any screaming." She said in long suffering tones.

"There was in my head." He insisted.

…_Now I'm standing alone in a crowded room and we're not speaking  
And I'm dying to know is it killing you like it's killing me…_

"This doesn't remind you of Parker's party?" Veronica demanded incredulously.

"It reminds me of my entire senior year of high school!" He countered.

…_but you held your pride like you should've held me…_

"That was _you_!" they yelled at each other.

"I caved in to you _every time!" _Logan threw his hands up in exasperation.

"Well if it wasn't pride that kept you trying to out-piss Weevil that summer, what was it?"

"Stupidity! You _know_ I have no pride!"

"Eh. Good point." She conceded.

"Our story may have started with tragedy but I prefer to see it as an action adventure, noir, spy thriller with comedic overtones that occasionally lapse into outright farce."

"Don't forget epic." Veronica reminded him as she leaned into his side. "An epic, romantic saga."

"Yes." He wrapped an arm around her as 'Never Grow Up' began.

…_To you, everything's funny. You've got nothing to regret.  
I'd give all I have honey if you could stay like that…_

"I can't remember a time without regret." Logan shook his head.

"I'd give anything if I could change that." She took his hand again.

…_So here I am in my new apartment in a big city they just dropped me off.  
It's so much colder than I thought it would be so I tuck myself in and turn my night light on.  
I wish I'd never grown up…_

"I suppose that song makes sense to someone who didn't grow up in the Ogre's castle," Logan said, "But I can't relate."

"No, we're hardly the ones who are going to romanticize our childhoods," Veronica agreed. "But we'll fix that for our kids."

They listened to the words as 'Enchanted' began.

…_There I was again tonight; forcing laughter faking smiles  
same old tired lonely place  
Walls of insincerity, shifting eyes and vacancy…_

"Been to that shindig a thousand times." Logan muttered.

…_Your eyes whispered 'have we met'  
Across the room your silhouette starts to make its way to me._

_"_And now she's lost me."

"Haven't you ever been completely taken with someone you met at a party?" Veronica asked.

"I've been completely taken with someone _at_ a party, but I brought you there myself."

"What, so _no one_?"

…_The lingering question kept me up  
Two am, who do you love?  
I wonder til I'm wide awake…_

"Ugh! I've been there!" Veronica groaned. Logan raised his brows and she explained. "The whole time I was with Duncan. When I wasn't obsessing over you, I was obsessing over Meg. None of it was good."

…_Now I'm pacing back and forth, wishing you were at my door  
I'd open up and you would say…_

"Been there, too!" she laughed. "And you were at my door. Beat all to hell with the cops hot on your trail but still…" Logan laughed. Five years after the fact, there was still nothing funny about that night but having survived, they laughed anyway.

…_I'll spend forever wondering if you knew  
I was enchanted to meet you.  
Please don't be in love with someone else  
Please don't have somebody waiting on you…_

"Can't really relate to that one, either." Logan shrugged. "I mean, I can see it but it never happened to me."

"Oh, Logan! It happened at every party you ever went to!"

"I never sat up all night –"

"She's singing _about you_."Veronica shook her head, unable to believe how obtuse Logan was about his own attractiveness.

"You know, not everyone finds me as wonderful you do." He pointed out, skeptically. She snorted in derision as the next song began.

'Better Than Revenge' made them both laugh out loud.

…_Soon she's gonna find stealing other people's toys on the playground won't make you many friends  
She should keep in mind, she should keep in mind there is nothing I do better than revenge…_

"And now we have your theme song!" Logan raised his glass and she tapped hers to it.

"I have a feeling Ms. Swift and I would get along just fine." She said, taking a deep pull on her beer.

"Her revenge is less bloody than yours but it's a lot more public." Logan noticed as the singers voice taunted;

…_Do you still feel like you know what you're doing? I don't think you do. I don't think you do…_

They were still laughing when the strains of 'Innocent' filled the air.

…_Guess you really did it this time. Left yourself in your war path.  
Lost your balance on a tightrope, lost your mind trying to get it back…_

Veronica looked at Logan.

…_Did some things you can't speak of but at night you live it all again.  
You wouldn't be shattered on the floor now if you had seen what you know now then…_

"I don't have nightmares." Logan said. "What do you suppose that means?"

…_It's alright, just wait and see.  
Your string of lights are still bright to me  
Who you are is not where you've been  
You're still an innocent.  
It's okay, life is a tough crowd  
32 is still growing up now…_

"Thirty two?" Veronica exclaimed. "Co-dependant much?"

"Suddenly this became Trina's theme song." Logan observed. "I guess the title is meant ironically."

…_Time turns flames to embers  
You'll have new Septembers  
Every one of us has messed up, too…_

"Still," Veronica said, remembering her day at work. "I suppose it's pretty arrogant to assume we're done screwing up, just because our previous screw ups were so monumental."

…_Minds change like the weather"  
I hope you remember  
Today is never too late to be brand new…_

"Still sounds like Trina to me." Logan said.

…_Lost your balance on the tightrope. It's never too late to get it back…_

"But I do like the philosophy." He said considering it, as the song ended. "After all, the world is full of middle aged screw ups. I _hope_ I'm still growing up at 32."

The song 'Haunted' began.

…_You and I walk a fragile line I have known it all this time but I never thought I'd live to see it break…_

…_Holding my breath, won't lose you again  
something's made your eyes go cold.  
Come on, come on, don't leave me like this, I thought I had you figured out.  
Something's gone terribly wrong you're all I wanted…_

They looked at each other, eyes wide.

…_Stood there and watched you walk away from everything we had but I still mean every word I said to you…_

Logan nodded.

…_He will try to take away my pain and he just might make me smile but the whole time I'm wishing he was you instead…_

Veronica nodded.

…_Come on, come on, don't leave me like this I thought I had you figured out  
Can't breathe whenever you're gone  
I can't go back  
I'm haunted…_

"I'm beginning to think she stole that diary I never got around to writing." Logan said, shaking his head.

"Scary." Veronica agreed, scooting even closer to him. He tightened his arm around her as 'Last Kiss' began. The ballad was a lovely lament about a lost love but had no big effect on them until the bridge.

…_And I'll go sit on the floor wearing your clothes  
All that I know is I don't know how to be something you miss  
I never thought we'd have a last kiss_  
_Never imagined we'd end like this  
Your name forever the name on my lips  
So I'll watch your life in pictures like I used to watch you sleep…_

Veronica flinched.

…_And I feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe…_

"Turn it off." She suddenly said. "Stop."

…_And I'll keep up with our old friends just to ask them how you are…_

"TURN IT OFF!"

Logan hit the pause button, shocked to see the tears running down her face.

"Ronnie?"

"That was almost us!" she said, shaking her head forlornly. "That was almost me! I pushed you away and I don't even remember why and I can't even think about how close I came to only seeing you in magazines and tv clips when I should be watching you sleep and feeling you breathe!"

"Ronnie," he said gently, removing the once again empty glass from her hand and setting it on the table. "Ronnie, don't cry."

"It's so sad!" she leaned into him and he pulled her up onto his lap. "I was so stupid and stubborn and I'M the one who held my pride when I should've held you and _I'm sorry!"_

"Hey, hey Baby, it's okay." He stifled his laugh, realizing again that there was a very good reason his tiny wife rarely drank; she was _such_ a lightweight. "That was never going to be us. Never."

"But it almost _was_! It was. Do you have any idea how I _felt_, seeing you with Parker? And Mac even said you were sweet with her and I was never going to be with you again!"

"Mac said that?" This was news to Logan.

"Mac said what?" Veronica sniffed, confused.

"She said we'd never be together again?"

"What? No! She just said you were sweet with Parker and it was like a knife to the kidneys, that I was never gonna be with you again." Her face crumpled in anguish. "I was never going to kiss you again."

"Veronica," Logan sighed indulgently. "That was never an option. I was never gonna let that happen to us. Ever. Even when I was with Parker, I knew I was going to spend the rest of my life getting you back. You're all I've ever wanted. You're all I'll ever want. And you've had way too much to drink."

"I…" she looked at him. "Oh, I think I have."

"You had a crappy day at work so you came home and got wasted. It happens."

"I spent the last four years working towards the FBI and I may not have lasted four months." She groaned, covering her face with a hand. "This could be so embarrassing. What'll we do now?"

"Don't worry. I hear it's easier than ever to apply for food stamps."

"Real funny. But speaking of food; I'm hungry."

"You go upstairs, get out of your work clothes, take a shower and sober up. Or, change your clothes and we'll go out; do something fun."

"Fun would be good." She wiped her cheeks and smiled. "Be a shame to waste a good buzz."

"Is it good?" he looked doubtful. Tipsy Veronica was usually cheerful; not so much today.

"It could be. Are you okay to drive?"

"I weigh over ninety pounds; it takes more than a beer and a half to hammer me."

"I think I just need something to eat. Let's go out."

"In those shoes? I don't think so."

Veronica stood, kicked off the offending sensible shoes, smoothed her skirt and said "That's a really good cd," and went into the house. Logan picked up the remote and turned off the Boze.

"No wonder people hate country music." He muttered as he followed Veronica inside.

* * *

They went downtown to Crave; a bistro on Hennepin Avenue with a roof top deck. The crowd was young, hip and fun, the music nothing to make Veronica sad, the food good and the view great.

There was another restaurant on the roof of the building across Hennepin. Logan bet a guy at the bar he could throw a dinner roll over the five lanes of traffic below to the restaurant across the street. Veronica dragged him out of the place before management demanded that they leave, although she was torn; not only was she curious as to whether or not Logan could in fact throw a dinner roll across Hennepin Avenue, she also thought it would be a shame to pass up what may well turn out to be her last chance to play the FBI card. On the other hand, someone could get hurt getting pasted by a flying dinner roll and if it turned out she hadn't actually been fired yet it would be stupid to throw another log on the flames of her career.

* * *

The call from the office, telling her that Monday she'd be asked to clear out her desk and turn in her credentials and weapon never came so she tried to relax and enjoy the beautiful weekend with Logan.

He did a good job of distracting her.

The weather was gorgeous, they took the canoe out, they rode their bikes and they walked to the Tin Fish for lunch. For the most part, Veronica was able to suppress her professional anxiety enough to enjoy herself but by Sunday evening, the low level dread picking at the edges of her mind began to grow. It was like being in high school again, when the only thing that enabled her to face each Monday was the idea of something bigger and better waiting for her out in the real world after graduation, only now there was nothing bigger and better waiting.

At least, not out there. She looked over at Logan, who sat on the patio, thumbing through a magazine as he waited to turn the chicken he had on the grill. There was nothing bigger and better waiting 'out there' but there was plenty right here, that was more than worth the humiliation of an aborted career to protect. She smiled, knowing she had made the right choice.

"Whatcha reading?" she asked, wondering if it was latest issue of Cigar Aficionado.

"It's an art catalogue." He said, dropping it onto the table and standing. He went over to the grill. "There's an auction coming up next month. It's some kind of fancy pants fund raiser for the Art Institute, here in town. I thought it would be a good excuse to break out those garnets I gave you for your birthday; it's black tie, a real swanky soirée so we got some shoppin' to do."

"We do?" she reached for the catalogue, a siren going off in her head.

"Yeah. It's been awhile since you had a chance to get all dolled up and rub shoulders with the crème de la crème. Plus, it's artsy. There are bound to be a few interesting people there, don't you think?"

"Interesting, how?" she asked as she turned the glossy pages. The catalogue was very expensive, well put together and the pieces shown were beautifully photographed. It was a press packet clearly aiming for the upper crust, no hold barred, spare no expense crowd.

"Oh, you know; artists." Logan shrugged, tending the chicken. "They're supposed to be crazy, right? Crazy people can be fun."

"Rich crazy people even more so." She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Yeah." He grinned. "So, you wanna go?"

"How did you get this?" she held up the catalogue.

"Joanne McKnight sent it. She's the-"

"I remember. Anything in this like the pieces she held for you?"

"No. Apparently, it's all important or soon-to-be important work."

"Wow."

"Well, you never know. There might be something good stuffed into a dark corner somewhere. Or someone who knows someone who knows something. I just thought you'd like a glamorous night out."

"Logan," she said, bemused. "This is what Larson and I argued about! The Bureau is investigating a case that centers on art auctions. He wanted me to use you to get us an invite and a catalogue. THIS…" she held up the glossy tome, "…is the source of all my trouble!"

"What are you talking about?" Logan looked completely confused.

"My boss knows who you are." Veronica explained. "He thought we could use you to get access to the inner sanctum and see who might be involved."

"Oh."

"Naturally, I freaked."

"Why?" The confused look was back.

"What do you mean, 'why'? It's bad enough they know who you are, I'm not about to let them use that against us."

"Doesn't sound like they want to use it _against_ us. Seems like they just want to use anything they can get their hands on."

"Well, they can't use any_one_ and I'm not about to let them get their hands on you."

"I don't mind." He came over and sat beside her. "I'll help. You know I'd do anything for you."

"I know you would. That's why I didn't ask. You've gone to great lengths to build a new identity for yourself. I would never ask you to give that up. I told them as much."

"Why? I think it would be fun!"

"You would!" she rolled her eyes. "You probably thought pulling a gun on Liam Fitzpatrick was '_fun_'!"

"Actually, the first time I did it, he had a needle to your eye and I was terrified that he'd call my bluff, so no; that wasn't _fun_." Logan said, irritated. "The second time I was operating purely on reflex but I can assure you it wasn't my idea of a good time. Anyway, we're not talking about chasing a bunch of bloodthirsty kidnappers through the desert, just the chance to get glammed up and meet a few of the town's movers and shakers."

"Point taken but you understand why I wasn't thrilled with the idea of letting the Bureau _use_ you. They can do whatever they want with me but I made damn sure they knew you were off limits! I was protecting you."

"They can NOT do whatever they want with you. I'm the only one with that privilege."

"You know what I mean." She smiled. "I've been trained; you haven't."

"Au contraire! I'm better trained than you are for a black tie/big money affair populated by the rich, beautiful and smug! This is the sort of situation where I can protect you better than you can protect me, although I would appreciate it if you could keep me out of interminable conversations with boring, old socialites, or worse yet; boring young social climbers.  
I really do want to start buying art. That's a lot easier accomplished under my old name; thanks to the 'rents, I don't have to waste any time prying open doors that are already unlocked and rolling out the crimson shag. It's not 'Logan Echolls' that I want to keep secret, Veronica; it's 'Logan Mars'. No reason any of this…" he waved his hand at the house and yard, "has to come into it."

"Logan." She shook her head.

"Look at the facts, Veronica; your boss already knows. McKnight knows. I didn't give her this address, only Sam's contact info. See?" he indicated his accountant's address label on the catalogue. "This came though Sam. He got us the tickets under the name Echolls. Our whereabouts and secret identities are safe. I'll be undercover as myself and you can be…Mata Hari, if you like."

"You already bought the tickets?"

"Yeah. I want to go and it never occurred to me you'd have a problem with it."

Veronica shook her head and laughed, helplessly. "Well, if we're going to be there anyway…"

"That's all I'm saying! Donate to charity, have a fun time, maybe buy something and you rack up buco brownie points at work! Fun, easy and completely tax deductible. No downside."

"I still don't want Larson to think he can just add you to his arsenal. The whole thing makes me very uncomfortable. You're a private citizen, not an agent. You owe them nothing!"

"I'm a citizen of the United States of America, young lady. I'm happy to help the FBI in any way I can."

"Storing up points for the next time you get charged with a federal crime, are we?"

"Couldn't hurt."

To Be Continued...


	29. Chapter 29 Knowledge is Power

Chapter 29 Knowledge is Power

By eight O'clock Monday morning, Section Chief Larson had been at his desk for a little over an hour. He glanced up from the report he was reading only when the door opened. His eyebrows lifted when he saw not his administrative assistant, Cheryl, with a hot cup of coffee and a new pile of reports but Agent Mars.

Her attitude was markedly different than when she'd stormed out of this office three days ago. He noticed that her rigid body language and furious countenance had been replaced by the ease of confidence. She looked as though she knew she held a winning hand. He kept quiet but watched warily as she reached into the large bag slung over her shoulder and pulled out a thick, glossy magazine which she placed on his desk.

It was the marketing catalogue of the upcoming charity auction at the Institute of Art.

"Here are the materials you were looking for, sir." She said. "I'll need to have that back once you've made a copy. If there's anything else I can do to help the investigation, don't hesitate to ask."

Larson was momentarily caught off guard. In the few seconds it had taken her to cross the floor to his desk, he had steeled himself to refuse her weapon and credentials and talk her out of resigning. The unexpected acquirement of the elusive auction catalogue forced him to shift gears quickly. Agent Mars was halfway to the door when he stopped her.

"Mars! Sit." He barked, then picked up the catalogue and flipped through it, assuring himself of its authenticity as she strolled back to his desk and took a seat. He looked at her. No wonder she looked like the cat that ate the canary. "You've just jump started this investigation by weeks!"

"_I_ am an asset to the Bureau, sir." She said, pointedly. "My husband is _not_."

"So I gathered at our last meeting." Larson said wryly. "Now you bring me this?"

"Mr. Echolls expressed interest in this event independent of any interest the bureau may have. I can get into the auction as his date. He is _not_ a confidential informant. He's not an asset of any kind. His name will appear nowhere in any official reports." She said. "If you still want me to work this case, I'll be submitting a reimbursement claim for three tickets of admission."

"Three?"

"Mr. Echolls doesn't always bring a guest to these events but he never attends without his personal assistant."

"But you just said he was going anyway."

"That's beside the point. Mr. Echolls was planning a fancy night out with his wife. If I get this assignment, I'll be attending the auction as Mr. Echolls' date in name only and I'll be working. He has graciously volunteered to give up the undivided attention of his wife at this black tie affair. He deserves to be compensated for his civic mindedness."

"We'll give him a medal."

"What part of 'low profile' don't you understand?"

"I'm kidding." Larson sighed. "Naturally, we'd cover your ticket, but we're not putting up two grand for a multi millionaire art collector and his 'personal assistant' to get into a fund raiser they had every intention of attending!"

"Whatever." The young agent shrugged, snatched back up the catalogue and stood, shoving it into her messenger bag. "Good luck finding another one of these!"

"Agent Mars!" Section Chief Larson hadn't felt such a loss of control of a situation since he'd ascended to his current rank within the bureau.

"Seriously, sir. What's the price of a couple of tickets when weighed against…how did you put it? 'Jump starting this investigation by weeks'? The bureau has less than a month to prepare for this auction so it's pretty much my terms or wait till next time. For heaven's sake, sir; it's for _charity_."

"Fine!" he motioned for her to sit back down. "I'll see that your expenses are approved."

"Great. How much will I be getting for wardrobe?"

"For what?"

"I assume there will be a budget for wardrobe?"

"Why do you assume that?" For the third time since Agent Mars had entered his office, Larson had the uncomfortable feeling of his mouth falling open.

"You don't think most Federal agents have closets full of formal wear, do you? You chose me for this assignment because you thought I'd blend in. Do you really think in a crowd of Pohlads, Daytons and Cargills I can show up sporting the latest in evening wear from Target? Do the words 'sore thumb' mean anything to you? No wonder the bureau has such a hard time pulling off this sort of assignment." Agent Mars sighed, exasperated. "You really do need me, don't you?"

Larson sat back in his chair and sighed in resignation. He knew when he was beaten. It wasn't the look of condescending pity on the face of the rookie agent sitting across his desk that bothered him. It was that she looked no older or more formidable than his teenage daughter Stacy that really graveled his ass.

He'd never won an argument with Stacy, either.

* * *

Tuski almost wilted in relief when Veronica came through the bullpen doors and sat at her desk shortly after lunch.

"Mars! I was sure they barred you from entering the building this morning! I've been imagining you either on the street outside, pounding on the doors, crying to get in or locked in a cell down in the basement with a one way ticket to gitmo! Where have you been? What's going on?"

"Yeah," Morris turned around from his desk as well. "What is the going rate for telling the boss to eff off?"

"Well, it's not _gitmo_." Veronica grinned at her coworkers. "I don't think I actually did tell Larson to do anything unnatural to himself after all. I've just spent the morning being briefed by Assistant Director Johnson, to whom I'll be reporting on _my new case_!" She did a happy dance before dropping into her chair.

"You're guilty of gross insubordination and they give you a case?" Tuski frowned. "What is it; has a Flukeman been sighted in the city sewers?"

"Again; _not_ guilty of insubordination, gross or otherwise." Veronica reiterated. "Turns out, the things you scream in your head can't be held against you."

"Not until they fit our brains with microprocessors and gps chips, anyway." Morris said, sounding a little bit disappointed. "So what the hell did happen?"

"Do you remember what I said about being cute not getting me out of the bullpen?" Veronica asked.

"Yeah and you said being rich might do it. Did you win the lottery over the weekend, or what?" Tuski demanded.

"Pretty much." Veronica laughed. "As for the city sewers, this assignment could hardly take me further away from that scenario!"

She quickly filled the other two rookies in on the agency's suspicions regarding a high end fine art/money laundering operation.

"The auction here in town is at the end of the month so I have the next three weeks to learn all I can about art. The agency is footing the bill for me and Logan to spend an evening hobnobbing with the height of Minnesota society and I get a five hundred dollar wardrobe allowance!" she squeaked in excitement.

"Damn!" Tuski cried. "You didn't meet a guy named Beelzabub at a club Saturday night, did you? Work a deal? 'Cuz I gotta tell you, girl; don't trust that cat."

"Not at all." Veronica explained. "But I was able to come up with the catalogue the agency has been trying to get their hands on, thereby proving that I am the agent for this assignment."

"Well congratulations, Mars." Morris said. "We'll miss you."

"As far as I know, I'm not moving my base of operations from this desk." She said. "I don't get an office or anything. I just don't have to listen to Blythe's braying anymore!"

"So how did you get your hands on one of those catalogues?" Tuski asked. "Did you stake out Bill Pohlad's house and steal his mail?"

"Agent Tuski!" Veronica gasped. "Mail tampering is a federal crime! But I like the way your mind works."

"Oh, you're really going to like the alley it just ran down." Tuski said, her eye catching the figure exiting the elevator.

"Mm, mm." Veronica smiled, watching Shep stroll across the floor.

"Mars!" he grinned. "I just heard; congrats on getting your first field assignment. I think this calls for a celebration. O'Gara's after work?"

* * *

Veronica got home a little later than usual; having spent an hour at O'Gara's, allowing her favorite coworkers to toast her field opportunity and try to buy her drinks. After her emotional melt down with Logan and the beers on Friday, she refused any more than one vodka soda, which she nursed the entire hour and adamantly rejected any country music selections on the juke box.

She had a stack of large, beautiful books on modern art to bring home and start studying. Beginning the next morning, she would be meeting with one of the bureau's top art crime experts, learning as much as possible about modern art, art in general and fraud and forgery in particular.

She hadn't been so excited about work since the day she started. Finally; to have a real challenge she could sink her teeth into!

* * *

For the next few weeks, her mornings would be spent with Agent LeSuer, listening to lectures and power point presentations on everything from the current market in art to the rules of composition and color theory and dissecting page by page the pieces being offered for sale at the upcoming event. Her afternoons were for her independent research. She took to spending them at home; working online in the library office she shared with Logan.

"I promise not to bother you," she said as she flipped open her laptop across the partners' desk from him.

"I don't mind." He watched her set up her printer, open the catalogue, and begin her investigation file. "Is it okay that you're here, instead of at the office?"

"Yeh, it's fine." She logged in. "Long as I'm working, it doesn't matter where."

"What are you doing?"

"Research."

"Specifically?"

She looked at him over the top of her screen. "You mind? I'm trying to work here."

"You've got the catalogue; you're learning about art crime from your tutor, what more do you need to know?"

"Oh, grasshopper; so much!" she laughed. "I'm starting a file on every artist whose work will be offered at this shindig; by the time we make our appearance at the Institute, I will know the educational and family background and financial status and history of all…fifteen of them."

"And that will help you, how?"

"Knowledge is power. Everything else is transitory."

"You should have that needlepointed on a pillow."

"I should. Now hush; I gotta get to work."

"Are you only investigating the artists themselves?" he asked a moment later.

"Uh…no." she said, opening up a window to take her own notes on the material.

"Who else?"

"What?"

"Who else are you researching?"

"Logan…"

"Since you're going to be looking for evidence of criminal behavior, don't you think it makes sense to look at those who are most likely to engage in it?"

"And who do you suppose that would be?"

"The lawyers. The accountants. The hands-on money people."

"Give the boy a gold star! You have been paying attention all these years."

"Well, you brought me along as back up for enough interrogations; I saw a pattern emerge."

"You've been profiling." She nodded, impressed. "In addition to the artists themselves; their backgrounds, habits, financial situations etc., I will be gathering intel on their agents, managers, accountants and lawyers."

"Why?"

"Well, since I don't know what I'm looking for, I have to be ready to spot anything unsavory coming from any quarter. I need to know what possible entry to this crowd crime may have; I'll be looking for possible motives; see if anyone has money trouble?"

"The feds are suspicious of anyone with money trouble?"

"Ironic, I know. In addition to our old stand bys like booze, horses or women, I'll be looking for shady business holdings, anything that could put a person in a situation ripe for theft, extortion or blackmail."

"Like, maybe a relative whose special needs are more expensive than the subject's salary can cover?"

"Exactly!"

"How do you find all that?"

"The beauty of the badge, my dear. I now have access to federal data systems that will tell me what brand of toothpaste these people use and how often they return to whatever pharmacy they go to buy it."

"Scary."

"It is. The smart criminals shop around and pay cash."

"But you don't even know if anyone on that list you're investigating is a criminal."

"This stuff is all public record."

"Even scarier."

"I guess…" she looked out the window. "Imagine how many people could be Googling you right now."

"Google? Crap, I was only worried about Youtube. I talked to Trina a few weeks ago."

"You did?" Veronica was actually happy that Logan had made contact with his flighty sister. Trina was selfish, self centered and stupid but Veronica knew she had a soft spot for her little brother and hoped they would get over their estrangement. "When?"

"Yeah, I called her after that E! interview. I asked her not to mention me to the press anymore."

"How is she doing? Does she think the show will be a hit?"

"She always thinks everything is going to be a hit. She sounded good. She told me that old Larry King interview I did is still getting hits on Youtube."

"Oh. Yeah." Veronica nodded.

"You knew about that?"

"Um…yes. I did." Veronica had never told him that while he was with Parker, she had watched that interview twice a day, even when she was dating Piz. It had been her own form of self flagellation. She had noticed at the time that the clip was getting thousands of hits. She still had it bookmarked in her computer but since they had gotten back together, she only watched it when she missed him, such as the week she spent in Minneapolis before he moved east.

"Trina says I have a cult following." He shook his head in disgust.

"You mean besides me, Piz and Candy?" Veronica preferred not to think of the thousands of strangers, presumably mostly female who still watched the clip. "I wouldn't worry too much about that. I wasn't planning on using Youtube but depending on who shows up at the auction, I may have to keep it in mind."

"Are you researching the pigeons?" Logan's eyes widened in alarm.

"You mean the suckers, excuse me; Patrons of the Arts? Not yet; that phase of the operation can't happen until I know who they are."

"Even you can't get a list of who'll be attending?"

"Too many variables." Veronica said, shaking her head. "Even if the Institute would give us a list of who they sent announcements and invitations to, which they won't without a warrant, which we can't get without evidence of a crime having been committed…"

"God bless the Constitution."

"…there's no way to track contacts. It's easy for tickets to be purchased through a surrogate, like you did; JoAnne McKnight put you on the list and Sam Horschack made the buy. That's why it's so important to have an agent on the inside; I'll be able to identify buyers, see how they behave and go from there."

"As a fed, How are you approaching this differently than you would if this were a private case?"

"Well, as a PI, I wouldn't have the extensive data bases at my disposal but I'd also have a lot more leeway in how I went about gathering evidence. PI's are not bound by the same civil rights laws or rules of admissibility that we members of the DOJ have to adhere to. On the other hand, I'd have a client; someone with a complaint of a specific crime. As it is, I have no focus yet; just a vague, amorphous suspicion that a situation has developed which is ripe for major league criminal behavior."

"That sounds vaguely fascist."

"_But_ with any luck, attending the auction will change that. Just like in private investigation, we'll go wherever the evidence leads us. In the mean time, I'm going in armed with the knowledge of every detail I can glean on those players in the drama that I'm aware of."

"That's it; I'm a cash only operation from now on."

"Like that would work." She snorted. "Your best bet is to diversify your holdings as much as possible; make the paper trail a mountain too big to tackle without compelling reasons. From what I remember, you're off to a pretty good start. Jeez, you're financial records took up, what? Seven boxes? And that was before you even came into your full inheritance. How in the world do you keep track of it?"

"I put it all in Beanie Babies."

"Beanie Babies? Do some of them say 'I wuv you beary much'?"

"They all say 'I love Big Brother'."

"Oh, guess what? Big Brother is going to reimburse us for all three tickets!"

"You can't buy my silence!"

"Obviously. But if we're going to make this 'one office, shared desk' thing work, you're going to have to shut up and leave me alone."

"You shut up. I've been in here minding my own business for months now before you showed up, looking all cute and official and deadly and stuff."

"Noted, but still…"

"Zip it, woman! Trying to work, here!"

* * *

Later on, in the kitchen, JR wasn't happy with the news.

"Mars is remitting reimbursement forms for the auction tickets?" he asked Logan. "Do you think that's a good idea?"

"I think not spending two grand is a good idea." Logan said.

"You don't see an inherent conflict of interest in this?"

"It's the federal government and a few thousand bucks. In the time we've spent discussing it, they've pissed away ten times as much!" Logan dismissed his henchman's concerns and picked up the tray of appetizers for the patio.

"This is not a good idea, Moneybags." JR warned.

"Shrimps on treadmills!" Logan said as he went out the back door. "Look it up!"

* * *

Out on the patio, Veronica and Logan enjoyed their dinner. The sun was setting a little earlier these days. It no longer stayed light out past nine O'clock and although the days were still warm and sunny, with dusk the nights were becoming chilly. Instead of waiting until after they ate, the pair of them had walked around the lake before dinner. Now they were content to sit in their backyard, and watch the sun set.

"I think it's time for you to meet Tuski and Shep." Veronica said.

"Yeah?" Logan looked worried.

"Yeah. You'd like Morris, too. He's kind of a nerd but you seem to get along well with the type."

"I get along with all types but the nerds and I do have an affinity."

"I haven't met Morris' wife yet and they have a little girl so I don't know how social they are but Tuski's been hinting for a while that she'd like to meet you…"

"Really?" he grimaced.

"She wants to meet _my husband_. All she knows about you is how crazy I am about you."

"O God, the pressure." He groaned.

"You'll like them. They're both really smart and funny and cool."

"If you say so."

"You used to like going out and meeting new people." She pointed out.

"I used to like taking Ex and hooking up with strange girls." He rebutted. "Or at least I used to do those things…I don't remember liking it much."

"Logan."

"I have to work that day?"

"You can't hide in this house forever."

"Sure I can."

"If I don't let anyone meet you, they're going to either start thinking I made you up or there's something wrong with you. The last thing you want is for a bunch of FBI agents to become curious about my reclusive husband. It's time. It's what normal people would do."

"Explain to me again the importance of being normal."

"Sugarpants, I know the ship sailed on normal years ago but if you want to avoid scrutiny it's imperative that you learn to _behave_ like a normal person. I promised I wouldn't inflict anyone on you that you wouldn't like. Have I ever steered you wrong?"

"No. You are a stellar judge of character." He smiled at his wife. "That doesn't worry me."

"And they'll like you."

"Everybody likes me." He said dryly.

"Don't you want to meet my friends?" she wheedled.

"You're the one who hasn't let me join you for drinks after work." He pointed out.

"Not because I don't want you to meet them. If you worked in downtown St. Paul and didn't have to drive through both cities in rush hour traffic to join me over there, you'd have met them weeks ago."

"That's what you say but all I hear is 'let's have sex'."

"_What?_"

"All I ever hear is 'let's have sex'." Logan said, sounding puzzled.

"This is exactly why I can't take you anywhere." Veronica giggled.

"Fine, I'll have sex with you. Quit nagging."

* * *

Logan awoke to a room filled with moonlight. He was about to get up and pull the sheers closed across the window when he caught sight of his sleeping wife. He lay back on one elbow, staring. In the colorless light of the moon, she looked like she was carved from silver. The stark shadows fell across her form, emphasizing her ethereal beauty. As tiny as a child but with the curves of a woman, she looked like a refugee from the Faeries, come into the world to enchant him and lead him to his death.

As he indulged himself in the rare opportunity to stare at Veronica unhindered, her mouth fell open and she began to softly snore. The tiny smile playing at the edges of his mouth bloomed into a grin.

He would unhesitatingly follow Veronica to his death but not because she was pretty.

She may look as charming and delicate as a pearl and silver sculpture but he knew the truth was closer to an epee, or a pearl handled colt. Beautiful to behold; deadly in practice.

She was the bravest, strongest, most dangerous person he'd ever known but she was also the kindest, quickest and most fun and he worshipped her for it.

He couldn't believe his good luck that of all the people on earth, he was the one she trusted to keep her secrets, have her back and lie beside her while she snored in the moonlight.

Sometimes Veronica's sleep was disturbed. Her nightmares didn't always wake her up but they usually woke Logan, who had discovered years earlier that by wrapping himself around her and simply breathing in her ear, he could bring her back to a restful sleep.

Logan had never thought it strange that Veronica suffered night terrors while he didn't. They had both been through some horrific times but Logan's child hood had been filled with such unending drama that anguish and violence were just the waters he swam in. Veronica had accused him more than once of actively looking for trouble and she was undoubtedly right. Trouble was well within Logan's comfort zone; it was serenity that made him nervous.

Veronica, on the other hand, had grown up thinking that life was all sunshine and daisies until that terrible day when the lights went out. And she had been there. She had looked upon Lilly's body, lying broken and empty on the pool deck. Logan hadn't seen that. He'd caught glimpses of that awful video online but he'd never forced himself to watch it.

Aaron had frightened, threatened and beaten Logan as far back as he could remember but he'd never attempted to kill him. He'd never locked him in a freezer, told him he was about to die and lit it on fire. That memory was Veronica's to carry.

She was the only person on earth who had never held Logan responsible for Aaron's crimes. Never once, in all the years he'd known her, had Veronica looked at him and seen 'Aaron Echolls' son'.

She had always seen Logan as himself, whether he was behaving like a psychotic jackass or acting as her champion and for that, he loved her with all his heart.

He hadn't been blowing smoke that day on the beach when he'd told her he'd always loved her. Before Lilly's death had overwhelmed him with grief, guilt and rage, he'd been a happy enough kid. He'd approached life as an adventure and as anyone who's ever read a book knows; adventures frequently feature run-ins with ogres and villains. The trick was to surround yourself with good guys and Veronica had always been one of the good guys Logan had wanted on his team.

Naturally, he'd fallen in love with Lilly. She was the shiniest, most glamorous thing he'd ever seen and back then, glitter was all he could see. Veronica, back in those days, had been sweet and kind and fun but there was nothing to indicate that she had a core of steel. Logan, at thirteen, had no way of knowing that someday he would value steel more than a big pair of…shoes.

He'd once told Veronica that despite all the pain, he wouldn't change a thing that had happened to them. The fires they had passed through had forged them into the people they were and as far as he was concerned, it had all been more than worth it.

The night he'd first made love to Veronica was the night he'd decided there must be a God, after all.

_Flashback _

_He and Veronica were watching a rerun of Raising Arizona on cable. Classes at Hearst started in just a week and they had worked hard to get Logan enrolled and registered. It had been a hell of a summer. High school graduation had been immediately overshadowed by Beaver and Aaron's suicides that same night at the Neptune Grand. The deaths of Beaver and Woody Goodman meant the full story of Veronica's rape need never come out. The death of Aaron meant Logan was really on his own, once and for all._

_With so much cataclysmic change swirling around them, it never once crossed Logan's mind to pressure Veronica to love him the way he loved her. She had jumped into bed with Duncan over the trauma of death. Logan wasn't about to let her make that mistake with him. He was just happy that she didn't hate him anymore._

_He had reached out and taken her hand. The next thing he knew, she was kissing him like there was no tomorrow, pulling him down on top of her. _

"_We know how this movie turns out." She had said with a smile. "Let's do something else."_

_So they did._

Well, that was new,_ he'd thought to himself afterward. _I think I'm in shock_._

_He had never kept track of the women and girls he'd been with. In the world he grew up in, A Streetcar Named Desire wasn't just the title of a movie; it was a way of life. He'd been aware of his father's behavior with women long before he understood the mechanics. He'd noticed the way other men flocked around his mother long before he understood why it enraged him. Growing up in Beverly Hills, he'd lost his innocence long before his virginity._

_He'd given that to Lilly when he was fourteen. At the time, he had assumed he was her first as well but somewhere along the way, he realized he had stopped believing that long before the whole truth came out. _

Is that why I was so in love with her? Because she was the first?

_It made sense. A born romantic, he had wanted to believe that what he and Lilly had was special. Even when he'd discovered that she had shared with lots of guys, he'd hung onto the belief that what they had was different; better. More, somehow. He'd stopped feeling bitter about Lilly long ago. He'd loved her for who she was, not for who he'd wanted her to be._

_But having loved Lilly was one of the reasons he was so stunned, now. _

_Lilly had been aggressive, adventurous and sexy as hell. She loved the physical act. She'd do it anywhere; the car, the pool, the hot tub, the beach, the closet during his parent's Christmas party…_

_He never let himself think of where else or who else she did it with. He'd naively and egotistically thought it was him she couldn't get enough of but now he realized he was just in the right place at the right time._

_Until the day he wasn't. _

_There was very little left of his feelings for Lilly by the time he watched those video tapes but seeing her with Aaron had destroyed any last shred of romantic notions he may have harbored for her. Even as he'd referred to her as 'the love of my life' to the Sheriff, he'd known she was no such thing. Wallowing in self pity just seemed appropriate to the occasion. _

_Caitlin had been only the most prominent in a long line of girls he'd used in his attempt to get over Lilly. Caitlin hadn't been the dynamo Lilly was; she was very particular as to what she would do and where she would do it. Logan had even suspected that she might be a virgin until the whole Chardo thing happened. You don't spend a night in a hotel with a chick who doesn't put out unless you're an idiot. Of course, seeing as Chardo _was_ an idiot…_

_Logan hadn't missed Caitlin for a nanosecond once he'd kicked her to the curb. There were too many other girls eager to take her place._

_There had never been any danger of Veronica taking her place. Veronica belonged in a place no other girl had ever come near. _

_He could still recall the panic that had gripped him that day on the phone, telling Veronica to brace herself for Duncan's righteous anger. Listening in, while that weird new kid hijacked her car and abducted her, the fear that flooded his veins was quickly replaced by a powerful need to do for Veronica what he hadn't been able to do for Lilly or his mom; rescue her. _

_She wasn't his girlfriend. She wasn't even his friend, anymore. But he'd moved heaven and earth to make sure nothing bad happened to her._

_And then she had kissed him._

_She rocked his world. Big time._

_He would have done things differently if he'd known how it was all going to shake out. But having no idea how to avoid trouble, he blew it. Big time._

_And along came Kendall. _

_Veronica may have been right when she accused him of having a death wish. At the time, death by Kendall sounded like a great idea. That woman was way too young to be Dick and Beaver's step Mom but in the ways of the flesh, she was as old as sin itself. _

_He'd barely known what had hit him when that woman seduced him. _

_He didn't know if she'd planned it from the moment she'd opened the front door and told him he could wait by the pool for Dick and Beaver's return or if the idea hadn't occurred until she saw him lying on a lounge. He didn't know and didn't care. She'd strutted out onto the pool deck in her bikini and straddled his lap, making many a school boy fantasy come true._

_Kendall was scary. _

_She was insatiable and fearless. She got off on the danger of doing it in the living room when Big Dick or the boys were expected home at any moment. She encouraged him to do things to her he'd only seen done on dirty little stages in Tijuana. He'd stopped being surprised by her depravity long before she'd run out of new tricks to show him. She'd put him in positions he didn't know humans could use. He and Duncan had had a copy of the Kama Sutra they'd spent more than one night studying but it was Kendall who insisted he put it into practice. She did things that would've grossed out a less erotically open minded man than Logan. She reveled in the fact that he was a minor and therefore what they did was illegal as well as immoral, unethical and probably unhygienic. _

_For awhile, just the thought of Kendall got him so excited it was painful. Nothing could make him forget Veronica and his broken heart as quickly and thoroughly as impaling Kendall. But somewhere along the line, she became merely a_ _convenient release rather than his sex goddess. _

_Sometime during that year, he realized she ached for him more than he did for her. She became a booty call. Then she just became a transparent annoyance. But the fact that she always came lead him to believe that he must be doing something right, or at least well._

_So yes, he had come to think of himself as experienced and accomplished in bed._

_Until that night when Veronica had taken him by the hand and lead him into his own bedroom and he'd had no idea what he was doing._

_Usually, when you wait so long for something you want so much, it's impossible for the reality to live up to your expectations. _

_Veronica made him feel brand new._

_He wanted to protect her. His mom had been the only person on earth he'd ever felt remotely protective of and he'd failed her. _

_Lilly? The idea of trying to protect Lilly was as ludicrous as trying to protect a lion. That's part of why he felt so guilty when she died; it had never occurred to him that Lilly could ever need anyone's protection and so he hadn't been there to offer his when the monster arrived._

_The irony of it is that she used to accuse him of jealousy while she was banging at least two other guys. Then, he kissed _one_ girl for _one_ second and she turned into the Wicked Witch of the West Coast and dumped him. He had tried to crawl back to her but it was too late. He was done feeling guilty about Lilly. He just wanted to remember her fondly as the wonderful, sexy, hot tempered girl she'd been. He'd always love Lilly but it was the love of an adolescent who couldn't get over the fact that she let him in her pants._

_Caitlin, Kendall and all the nameless, faceless others had just been sex. He'd never pretended he even liked any of them particularly, much less loved them. The sex had been good because it was sex; how could it not be good?_

_But this…this had raised sex to a whole new level he'd never dreamed existed._

_With a supreme effort of will, he lifted one heavy arm off the mattress and stroked Veronica's back. She was warm and soft and he felt the urge to roll over on top of her so that if the ceiling caved in, it would crush him and not her. He smiled. Warm and soft were two things he would not have applied to Veronica a year ago._

_She was the last person on earth he would have chosen to be with him at the most devastatingly low moment of his life. Yet, she had been there when the loss of his mom finally hit him and he was pretty sure that her presence was the only thing that had kept him from falling completely apart. Veronica had seen him naked long before she'd ever seen him without his clothes._

_After that, he'd shrugged off the face he showed the world and let her see him. He had worked hard for as long as he could remember to live down to his image of pampered privilege. He let no one see the pain he lived with. Veronica had been there when he'd lost the strength to hold up the mask and the fact that she'd seen through it somehow lessened his need for it._

_He wanted to protect her because she was the only person who ever made him feel safe._

_He would have gone mad during the whole Felix murder investigation if it hadn't been for Veronica. He wasn't sure he hadn't gone mad. She'd broken his heart when she dumped him but the humiliation of being thrown out of the apartment by the Sheriff had felt achingly familiar. He would have done the same thing in Keith's shoes. He was horrified to look back and see himself behaving like his father._

_How different everything would've been if he'd had a father like Keith Mars._

_So many terrible things had happened. He'd made so many mistakes. And Veronica, who never did anything wrong, seemed to pay for all of them. He swung his other arm up and stroked her hair. He wanted nothing but good things for her, from now on._

_That's when it hit him._

_Sex with Veronica had been different—exponentially better—because for the first time, he'd approached sex focused on her enjoyment, rather than his own._

_He had started slow, using his hands and his mouth to find every erogenous zone on her tiny, perfect, body. Her ears, neck, the palms of her hands, the inside of her elbows and wrists, the hollow of her hips and ankles…he hadn't let her touch him as he lavished attention on her because he didn't want to be distracted from his purpose. He'd gone down on her which was something he'd never really been into before. He'd never seen what was in it for him. Veronica's reaction had been inspiring and he discovered a real talent for it. By the time he penetrated her she was humming like a tuning fork. When he made her come it was so…_

_It felt like the top of his scalp and the soles of his feet blew clean off._

_He'd made love instead of fucking._

_The cheesiness of the thought made him groan even as he acknowledged it's truth. _Love changes everything.

_He tightened his arms around her and Veronica giggled and said "You were right; he was doing it wrong."_

"_Aw Ronnie," he sighed. "Until tonight, _I_ was doing it wrong."_

_An unwanted idea popped into his head; had he been subconsciously trying to outperform Duncan? If Duncan were to return to Neptune, would she go back to him?_

_The thought actually made him go numb. Fear shot through his veins like ice and his arms fell back to the mattress and his breath hitched._

"_What?" leave it to Veronica to notice these things. "Logan, what's wrong?"_

"_Do you still love him?" it never occurred to him not to be honest with her._

"_I'll always love him," she answered lightly. "Just like you'll always love Lilly."_

"_Lilly's not coming back."_

"_Do you think I'm only here because he's not?" she asked, lifting her head so she could see his face._

"_Well…" he stared at the ceiling. "It makes sense. He's better looking than me, he's richer, smarter, better connected to a better class of people, he's the best guy I know…hell, he's actually good enough for you."_

"_Hey!" something in her tone of voice made him look her in the eye. "He's not the best guy I know. You're better than he is. You're stronger than he is, you're braver and every time I've needed you , you've been there for me. Even when you hated me. Even when everyone else was saying terrible things about me behind my back you always had the decency to only say them to my face."_

"_I'm sorry."_

"_You always let me hit back. Duncan didn't. He just…went away." She smiled at him. "Three times now, you've come to my rescue and you want to know something? I was never surprised that it was you."_

"_I was. I was surprised every time." He wanted to tell her he loved her but she started to laugh and the moment passed._

_End Flashback_

All those memories rushed through his mind in a second and a half as he watched his wife sleeping in the moonlight. She shivered. He reached out and carefully pulled the blanket over her then let his head fall back on his pillow, still facing her. She rolled toward him, coming to rest against his chest. He slid his arm around her and pulled her close.

"I'm sure I'll like your friends." He whispered into her hair. There was really never any doubt that he would give in to her. He couldn't imagine not giving her anything in the world that she wanted.

To Be Continued...


	30. Chapter 30 Contagious

Chapter 30 Contagious

"Come on, Tuski. Let's get your fine ass out the door." Shep said, glancing at his watch. "They're expecting us."

"Relax, Shep. They're not gonna lock the front door and pull the shades if we're not there at six on the dot." Tuski said soothingly as she carefully fixed and inspected her earrings.

"It's rude to be late."

"Not as rude as showing up half dressed." Tuski stepped into her shoes. "And believe me, nowhere near as rude as me, showing up anywhere sans make up."

"You're crazy; you don't need any of that."

"Right. See this stunning visage?" she waved her hand in front of her face. "Completely drawn on. Without liner, mascara and pencil, my eyes disappear. Don't even get me started on my hair. And you showing up here ten minutes early to pick me up doesn't get me ready any faster. No one's ever told you what a distraction you can be?"

"And here I've been congratulating myself on finding a low maintenance woman." Shep sighed.

"Oh, you poor deluded man." She sighed, picking up her purse. "I am as low maintenance as a woman gets. You got the address? Let's go."

"I got it." He said, watching her as she locked her apartment door and breezed down the walk to his car. Her hair, which she kept tied back at work, now hung to the bottom of her shoulder blades as shiny and smooth as a length of black silk. The shorts and pale yellow top she wore showed off her curvy figure and long legs better than her work suits ever could.

Shep, although an incorrigible flirt, had never asked out any of the women he worked with until he met Stephanie Tuski. There had been a connection of personalities between the two of them ever since she was the only rookie to laugh at an extremely dry joke he'd uttered at an orientation event. He had liked the way her dark brown eyes had continued to laugh long after she'd suppressed her mirth.

Then, there had been the banter and the teasing whenever he had run into her (gone looking for her) at the office. Finally, all joking aside, they had started a slow, tentative relationship outside of work.

Contrary to what Hollywood would have one believe, there were no restrictions about whom an agent could see socially. Friendships of all kinds were bound to develop in all work environments and not even the federal government can regulate who is drawn to whom. Naturally, sexual relationships between partners were frowned upon because it's monumentally stupid to bring that sort of emotion into that sort of working relationship but Shep and Tuski weren't partners. They didn't work in the same department or field team but since it was possible that someday they would, they had agreed not to push things into places they (Tuski) might regret later.

Shep had agreed to all Tuski's ground rules before their first date. Had he actually seen her with her hair down and in civilian clothes, he may not have been so quick to agree to her terms.

He liked her because she was smart, funny and had none of the belligerence so often found in post modern feminists. He also thought she was really pretty.

But he hadn't been prepared for the vision that greeted him when he picked her up for their first real date. 'Pretty' didn't begin to describe how she looked in a champagne colored dress that made her dark brown skin glow or the short skirt and three inch pumps that made her legs look four miles long and it had never occurred to him (being a guy) that even pretty women put on a whole new face for a night on the town than the one they wear to work.

"Damn, girl!" he'd exclaimed. "Your parents should have named you 'Maya'!"

"Huh?" the vision of beauty had answered.

"You know; the Hindu goddess of illusions." He had sputtered; afraid to blink for fear that she'd disappear.

"Just because my Dad's folks were from Calcutta doesn't mean I know a Hindu goddess from an Avon lady." She shook her head. "My Mom's maiden name is Nelson. I'm Lutheran, dude."

She may have been a perfect specimen of a Norwegian/Indian hybrid but her attitude as she walked to his car had been pure sister. It helped that her skin tone was two shades darker than Shep's, although he was African American.

All in all, she was about six times hotter in the real world than she was at work and Shep had thought she was _fine_ at work. He'd thanked all the gods, Hindu or otherwise that he'd had the sense to ask her out. That was before he'd been reminded of the ground rules.

So here it was, weeks later and he was staring at her as she waited by his car, mesmerized by her long legs and her unfashionably shapely figure, still only able to imagine her naked.

"Hey, Mr. It's-rude-to-show-up-late! Let's go!" the goddess on the curb yelled at him.

"Ooookay." He snapped himself out of his trance.

In the car, he punched the address Tuski gave him into his GPS system.

"So," she said, as he pulled into traffic. "What are you expecting?"

"What do you mean?"

"Veronica's husband. I can't wait to meet this guy!"

"Really? What are you expecting?"

"I don't know. At first, I pictured her as part of a teeny little salt and pepper shaker set, married to a male version of herself, then I wondered if she wouldn't be happier with a big, cuddly teddy bear of a guy and then I remember that look she gets on her face and the big teddy bear morphs into Antonio Banderas. I just can't wait to find out! So what do you think he's like?"

"I don't know. White, I guess."

"You don't have any image in your head as to what sort of guy our Agent Mars hitched herself to?"

"Well…" the tone of Shep's voice was tantamount to an admission.

"I thought so!" she cackled. "Come on! I gave you my ideas. You give me yours and whichever is closest buys the next round of drinks at O'Gara's."

"You want to compare profiles?" Shep laughed. "We don't have anything to go on."

"Sure we do; we have Veronica."

"Since you spend your days six feet away from her and I only see her a few times a week, you have an unfair advantage."

"I already admitted I'm all over the board. You have year's worth of experience over me when it comes to figuring people out. You've worked with actual profilers; seen how they do it."

"They have crime scenes and behaviors of the unsubs to work on. It's not like on TV; they don't just pull this stuff out of their asses on the fly."

"Don't be such a punk; no lives are at stake!"Tuski chided him. "I know you've got ideas about him. So do I."

"Okay." Shep chuckled, giving in to the game. "What do we know?"

"We know his name is Logan Mars. She just graduated so they must have been college sweethearts." Tuski thought for a moment before adding, "He's shy."

"Pretty thin." Shep shook his head. "What else?"

"Umm…" Tuski wracked her memory. "He made the cable guys sit up and beg."

"Aha!" Shep barked, slapping a palm on the steering wheel.

"What? You've come up with a profile from _that_?" Tuski asked.

"That's a lot. And don't forget the most important piece of the puzzle; Veronica herself."

"Okay." Tuski shrugged one shoulder. "Impress me."

"Well, what do we know about Mars? She's smart, unconventional and fearless. She doesn't need a man to take care of her. It seems to be the other way around in fact."

"She does seem very protective of him." Tuski nodded, thoughtfully. "I've gotten that vibe more than once."

"She's tiny; probably wouldn't be attracted to a guy who's physically intimidating."

"So you don't see her with the captain of the football team?"

"Her? No." Shep shook his head. "She wouldn't be so cliché. Not after the tale of high school horror she told us. No jocks. She'd chew up a guy like that and spit him out in about ten seconds. And an athlete wouldn't need the protection of a ninety pound girl."

"So you think he's a little guy. The salt and pepper shaker couple."

"Well…" Shep thought about that. "Kind of. He wouldn't have to be very big to seem big to her but I don't think he does. So yeah; he's a little guy."

"She's attracted to his vulnerability?"

"That's part of it." Shep nodded. "She says he's shy but he made the cable guys 'sit up and beg'? Cable guys are obnoxiously smug nerds who grew up to be dicks because they spent their formative years feeling superior for their brains but getting picked on for their lack of social skills and they use their new found status as a club to beat some respect out of the rest of us. Who can make cable guys tremble in their boots?"

"Logan Mars is a computer geek!" Tuski could see the shape of the profile Shep was drawing.

"Not just a geek; probably some uber nerd. He works from home, right?"

"I get that impression." Tuski nodded. "But…I see Veronica with a big, sweet teddy bear of a guy. Not dumb but quiet and willing to let her be the boss. Opposites attracting, you know?"

"You think she'd be attracted to a guy who let her push him around?" Shep frowned. "I don't."

"I definitely don't see her as the submissive one of the couple."

"But opposites don't always attract. We're not opposites."

"Sure we are."

"We're both federal law enforcement agents who just happen to be tall, dark and smoking hot!" Shep pointed out.

"But while I'm socially adroit, you're an oaf."

"Don't get mad just 'cause I'm right." Shep laughed. "Sometimes the opposite isn't the obvious. It all fits my profile."

"I'm not mad and you may be right. It does make sense. I can easily imagine Veronica being more comfortable with a guy her own size. The cable thing does indicate that he's computer savvy. The shyness and social unavailability all fits into your profile. It's just that…" Tuski hesitated.

"Just that what?"

"The girl turns to soup at the thought of him!"

"Soup? Really?"

"Really. I've seen it more than once."

"Well; smart is sexy." Shep shrugged. "Especially to a woman like Mars. Brains count for a lot more than a set of guns."

"A set of _guns_?"

"Big guns, baby." Shep lifted his right arm and flexed, showing off his bicep.

"I like you 'cuz you're _funny_." Tuski laughed.

"Funny, guns and more. Be prepared to be amazed, my dear." Shep said with a superior air.

"Amazed or amused?" Tuski wondered.

"Our host, Mr. Mars," Shep went on, confidently, "is a skinny little uber nerd who has an appropriate Star Trek quote for every occasion, always got picked on for being the class brainiac, was a virgin when he met Veronica and most likely lets his wife do all the talking."

"How'd you come up with the virgin part?"

"Haven't you ever seen The Revenge of the Nerds?"

"Yeah but…_Oh!_"

"See? Explains the soup part, too."

"Omigod, it actually does." Tuski was impressed.

"I'll bet you that they met on campus when Veronica came to his rescue while he was getting knocked around by some of your beefy jocks…"

"I can see it; little blond spitfire, putting the fear of God in a bunch of meatheads while skinny little Logan picks his books up off the floor. If anyone could do it, she could."

"Yes, and she fell for him when she discovered that he was there on a full ride in computer science or astro physics…"

"And now she's convinced that she's married to a future Nobel Prize winner!"

"You'll see." Shep nodded smugly. "I could probably be a profiler."

"But if he turns out to be big and quiet, you're buying the next round at O'Gara's."

"Deal."

* * *

Veronica had insisted they do everything themselves for their first real entertaining at home. She'd not only given JR the day and evening off, she'd asked if he could get out of his apartment and not come back until their guests had left.

"I don't get it." Logan said, as they were grocery shopping at Byerly's. "Why can't JR do the shopping and everything else he usually does, then just leave us alone when your work buddies show up?"

"The first rule of being a good hostess is to make your guests comfortable." Veronica tried to explain as they wandered through the produce section, choosing the ingredients for the salad, vegetable sides, and plenty of fresh fruit to go on top of the ice cream dessert. "My coworkers are typical young professionals; they don't expect to be met at the door by a butler or served dinner by a wait staff. They don't know about our circumstances and I'd just as soon not hit them with everything at once."

"They know about the art auction, don't they?" Logan chose a couple of beautiful, home grown tomatoes.

"They know I've got the assignment," Veronica nodded. "But they think I got that catalogue through some form of advanced detective work or espionage. They don't know it was delivered to my door via private messenger."

"You always did play your cards close to the vest."

"I figure why not maintain the illusion as long as possible?"

"That's what I always say." Logan agreed.

"Do we want some of this?" Veronica looked at the piles of Minnesota sweet corn. "I keep hearing it's better than porn dogs."

"Garrison Keillor wrote that if Satan had tempted Christ with sweet corn, the gospels may have had a whole different ending." Logan said, picking up an ear. "Blasphemous swine."

"Let's find out if Mr. Keillor knows what he's talking about." Veronica agreed, as Logan put a half dozen ears in a bag.

"You still haven't explained why we're spending our Saturday morning here while JR is off doing God knows what. I pay him to do this stuff."

"Doing your own grocery shopping is a great way to stay in touch with the common folk."

"I can't 'stay in touch' with people I've never had contact with." Logan reminded her as he tried to juggle three limes.

"I'm common folk." She reminded him, taking the limes away from him, placing two in the cart and one back in the produce bin.

"You are the most _uncommon_ girl on earth." He told her with a smile. "I've thrown parties. It's one thing I'm actually good at."

"I don't want anything outrageous tonight." She said. "People are afraid of Siberian tigers, especially at the dinner table. Makes them wonder if they're there _for_ dinner or _as_ dinner. I just want our first stab at entertaining to be as normal as possible."

"You keep calling this our first. Haven't we had Marla for dinner and breakfast more than once? Didn't we have a houseful of guests a few weekends ago? And what about your Dad, doesn't he count?"

"None of that counts." Veronica said, emphatically. "Dad is family, our friends have known us for years and they all know what to expect from you and Marla knows all about us. Way too much about us, thanks to your predilection for making an entrance. If the people I work with were to meet you under similar circumstances, I'd never be able to show my face downtown again."

"I fail to see how letting JR do the grocery shopping is in any way similar to locking your friends out of the house while you and I get reacquainted." Logan pushed the cart out of the produce section.

"'Get reacquainted'? Is that what we're calling it these days?" Veronica snickered.

"You know I like to be delicate when we're in public." Logan said, primly.

"I kinda like it when you're delicate in private." Veronica sighed, reaching up and running her finger along the edge of his ear.

"Control yourself, woman; we're not animals." He flinched but giggled at her touch.

"Says you." Veronica looked into the cart. "Did you grab the strawberries?"

"Yes. And raspberries, peaches and blueberries. Which of those fruits are beyond JR's capabilities?"

"I don't doubt JR's capabilities." Veronica rolled her eyes. "I want to do this right. We are entertaining new people. They only know me from work; they have no history with us, they have no expectations beyond a nice dinner with nice people…"

"I hate the word 'nice'. I'd rather be dead than 'nice'."

"Don't worry, Doll face; you probably will be dead before anyone uses that word to describe you. I just want to ease them into the idea that we're any different than any other pair of newlyweds. To that end, I want to keep this evening as simple as possible. I want to impress them with how normal we are, not with…with…"

"The truth?" Logan quirked an eyebrow.

"Exactly!" Veronica pointed him toward the butcher's case.

"So, we're doing the grocery shopping for the same reason you wasted a whole morning looking at cottages?"

"Those 'cottages' you disparage are gorgeous homes in a neighborhood that Tuski and Shep will probably never be able to afford. You're a snob."

"I'm not a snob." Logan said absently, his attention on the gorgeous cuts of aged tenderloin beyond the glass in the butcher's case.

"Yes you are." Veronica said. "It's such a part of you that you don't even know it's there. It's not your fault; you never had a chance to be any other way."

"If that makes me a snob, then I guess you're a social climber." Logan indicated the steaks he wanted and the butcher pulled them out of the case.

"Now you're just being silly." Veronica said as the butcher wrapped up their dinner. "You know I didn't fall for you because of your money."

"And I never held your lack of it against you."

"_Really_?" she stopped dead in her tracks and stared at him.

"Oh, I _used_ it against you." He clarified, unembarrassed. "I just never_ held_ it against you."

"A fine distinction, if ever there was one!"

"Glad you agree." Logan smirked. "It doesn't make me a snob just because I can afford to indulge my taste for good things. Let's get some shrimp for an appetizer."

"You want epinephrine and a tracheotomy for dessert? No thank you." She reminded him. "No; what makes you a snob is the fact that you totally look down on everyone who isn't in your social set."

"Ah, but you forget the fact that I _also_ totally look down on everyone who_ is_ in my social set."

Veronica thought about that for a moment, tapping her forefinger to her pursed lips. "I hadn't thought of that." She admitted. "I guess you're not a snob. You're just a snot."

"But an _equal opportunity_ snot. I really prefer the word 'misanthrope'. It's less insulting to everyone involved." Logan thanked the butcher as he handed them the package of steaks. "But I still don't see what grocery shopping has to do with any of that."

"I thought it would be fun to do it all ourselves. We don't need JR, you know."

"I do." Logan looked momentarily horrified. "What next? You'll expect me to do my own laundry?"

"Lord no!" Veronica gasped. "Before you'll be ready for laundry, you need to learn to procure your own drugs and hookers."

"Actually—"

"Let me maintain my illusions as long as possible, please?" she cut him off.

"Of course." He nodded.

"I thought this would be fun. Isn't this fun?" she did a little dance as they headed into the bakery section for some fresh French baguettes.

"Oh. Yes. This is as fun as shooting the Seven Ghosts in Sumatra." Logan said, dryly.

"See? I have no idea what that is, but it sounds like _fun_."

"You're actually scaring me."

"There's nothing to be afraid of." She sighed. "I'm not about to send your crutch packing. I just wanted this dinner to be as normal as possible and it's best to start in the way that you mean to go on. Regular people shop for themselves."

"Do couples shop together?" Logan looked around. The store was full of men and women but very few couples. "It's a great place to get picked up."

"_We_ shop together." Veronica said, shooting death rays at a woman who was checking Logan out. "And dinner won't be a problem; you're a fantastic outdoor chef. I am famous for my ice cream sundaes. Dinner for dessert night was always a favorite at our house."

"How awesome would it be if your work buddies showed up and all we had for dinner was candy and ice cream?" Logan grinned. "Would that be considered normal?"

"Sadly, no. But we'd be the most popular couple in town." Veronica's laughter joined his as they pushed their cart toward the frozen foods isle.

* * *

"So, we did the shopping, the cutting, all the grunt work…" Logan said as he and Veronica worked in the kitchen. He had seasoned the meat and put it on a large plate, covered and ready for the grill later. Veronica had cut one of the tomatoes into a big bowl with mixed lettuce and croutons. The cucumbers she had sliced thin and dumped into a bowl and covered with bleu cheese salad dressing. The salad and cukes were in Tupperware bowls in the fridge, ready to be transferred into serving dishes when the time came.

"Yes." She said, starting on the fruit. "We'll have everything ready so when they get here, all we'll have to do is bring it all out. You'll cook the meat, I'll do the corn and the salad and the fruit will be ready for the ice cream later."

"You told JR he couldn't come home until our guests leave?"

"Uh huh. We're going to eat on the patio. I didn't want him skulking around up there during dinner." Veronica explained patiently as she cleaned and sliced the strawberries.

"JR skulks?" Logan's eyebrows flew up. "I never noticed that."

"I'd rather not have to explain the man in the garage to our guests."

"Yeah, that's always awkward. Although, it's not as bad as a midget in the closet, _believe me."_

"Shep and Tuski are FBI agents. They'd notice if there was someone up there. If JR's not home, they won't think twice about the apartment above the garage."

"Is it secret? Am I not allowed to mention it?" he picked up a piece of strawberry and popped it in his mouth.

"Why would you mention it?"

"I don't know. Because it's there?"

"If they ask 'do you have an apartment above your garage?' I guess we can tell them the truth but there's no reason to offer any information they don't need; like the fact that your indentured servant lives there."

"He's not an indentured servant. If anything, he's overpaid."

"You think?" Veronica raised an eyebrow.

"No." Logan answered quickly. JR was invaluable to him.

"Well, they won't bring it up." Veronica said, reassuringly. "People don't usually ask if you have renters."

"You say it like its cooties. JR doesn't pay rent. And anyway, what have you got against renters? Some of my favorite people rent."

"It's just weird, is all!" Veronica finally snapped. "Would it kill you to pretend for one night that you're not a spoiled rotten brat who grew up with Hollywood sycophants slobbering all over you?" She slapped her hand over her mouth and stared at him, her eyes huge.

"Wow. This IS fun!" Logan stepped back from the island, both hands flung back at shoulder height as though in surrender, his eyes filled with glee.

"I'm sorry." She squeaked, holding out one hand to him. "I didn't mean for that to come out so nasty."

"That's what my mother said the day I was born…" Logan slumped and shook his head, sadly.

"I didn't mean…I just…" Veronica sputtered in dismay, refusing to laugh with him over her outburst.

"Veronica." His voice dropped down to the tone that made her knees weak as he leaned across the island toward her, "I know you're nervous about tonight. You want your friends to like me and you're afraid I won't like them."

"No, you will like them." She put her hands on top of his. "_You will_. I promise."

"Well then relax!" he reassured her. "There are only two kinds of people who don't like me; people who don't know me and people who know me really well!"

That got a laugh out of Veronica. "Well, fuck those people!" she said.

"That's…kinda the problem." He grimaced. That wiped the smile off his wife's face. "Gotta get some better jokes." He muttered as she glared at him.

"Look," she said seriously. "I want them to have a chance to get to know you on a level playing field. No bells and whistles. Obviously, they're going to have to know the truth, eventually. Just not tonight."

"They don't have to know anything you don't want them to." He told her. "Being your friends doesn't entitle them to your secrets."

"I know that but here's a difference between privacy and lying. If we're going to have friends, _real friends,_ not just people we're friendly with, eventually they'll have to know about...stuff. I know. I'm not talking about pretending to be different from what we are; I just don't want their first impression of you to be 'big money'."

"They don't have to know shit all about where it came from." He shrugged, turning his hands up to hold hers.

"Once they get to know you, it won't make any difference." She squeezed his hands.

"It's none of their business."

"They're FBI. Curiosity is their business."

"I knew someone like that once." He smiled. "I liked her."

"My point is only that I'd rather not spring the whole circus on them at once."

"Ah yes. The old 'the dog is on the roof' ploy."

"What?"

"You know, the old joke. The dog is on the roof?" Seeing the blank look on her face, Logan told her, "There was a soldier who left for Iraq and entrusted his best buddy with his beloved dog. While the soldier was gone, the dog died. The buddy thought he could break it to the soldier easier if it came in stages so he sent an email saying 'your dog is on the roof'. The next day, he sent 'Dog still won't come down from the roof', then 'Dog fell off roof.' And finally, 'Dog died.'"

"What a charming story." Veronica frowned.

"Yeah, well a week later the soldier got an email from his buddy that said 'Your Mom is on the roof'."

Veronica tried very hard not to laugh.

She failed.

"Yes, that's exactly what I mean." She admitted. "It would make them uncomfortable if we were to entertain them in a way in which they couldn't reciprocate but most of all, I want them to get to know you without any of the glamour that could bias them in any way. People have all sorts of odd ideas about money. You can be the sweetest, most charming man on earth but you can also…"

"Behave like an asshole? I'm aware. I do that on purpose, you know."

"I do." She sighed.

"Then why would you think I'd do that with people you like?"

"I don't. But if they were to come here and find JR at the door and running the kitchen or even hiding out in his place, it would be so weird and they might feel strange and look at us as though we were some kind of alien species and say something to put your back up and then you'd get defensive and…"

"And what? Shep might shoot me?"

"No. You're bullet proof when you put on your arrogant armor. If that happens, they'll never get a chance to know you."

"Veronica, you know perfectly well I'm not bullet proof." He frowned. "Armor? It's more like… a body cast."

She lifted one of his hands in both of hers and kissed his knuckles. She knew exactly what he meant.

"If we keep things simple tonight," she smiled at him, "there's less chance of accidents happening."

"I promise I won't say anything bad." He assured her with a grin. "Can I mention milky white thighs?"

"Dear Heather," she said, composing an imaginary email, "Logan is on the roof…"

* * *

Following the GPS directions, Shep and Tuski found themselves slowly cruising down Cedar Lake parkway, studying the numbers on the houses.

"This can't be right." Shep shook his head, admiring the tinge of autumn colors in the trees and the brilliant blue of the lake. "Call Mars. Bet you twenty its Cedar Lake Road, not parkway. No one on a government salary could live here."

"You forget the governor is a Dayton?" Tuski asked dryly as she pulled out her phone.

"That's my point." Shep said, pulling up in front of the mansion with the numbers Mars had given him. "Dayton money can afford a street like this, not governor money."

"Hey Veronica, it's me!" Tuski said into the cell. "Have I got your address right? Cedar Lake road? No? It is Cedar Lake Parkway. Uh huh. Okay." She hung up and looked at him. "This is it."

They got out of the car and stood for a moment, taking in the big, gorgeous, contemporary home. They looked at each other again.

"I cannot _wait_ to meet this guy." Tuski said, looking up at the house.

"Wait a sec," Shep took a few steps south and glanced back at the large garage behind the house. "Oh." He nodded and turned back to Tuski, explaining "There's an apartment over the garage."

"How can you tell?" she followed him and looked into the back yard.

"Two stories, big windows and a furnace chimney. Simple."

"Okay." She smiled at him. "Should we go up the drive way?"

They walked around the perfectly manicured lawn and up the drive to the back yard.

* * *

"I will never understand why you insist on ruining perfectly good tequila." Logan said, a look of distaste on his face as he watched Veronica turn on the blender.

"I don't understand how someone who likes tequila as much as you do can hate margaritas." Veronica answered, as she poured the frothy concoction from the blender into a crystal pitcher. "Would you put that in the sink, please?"

"It's my respect for the integrity of the beverage!" Logan said, taking the empty blender from her. "Throwing all that shit in it is like… putting make up on little girls. You take a thing of natural beauty and turn it into an abomination."

"They're delicious." Veronica shrugged, as she put the pitcher into the refrigerator.

"If you don't like tequila, don't drink it!" Logan gestured to make his point, the blender still in his hand. "Don't muck it all up with fruit and ice! Leave it alone! Leave it to those of us who can appreciate it for itself!"

"Whatever." Veronica shrugged and picked her buzzing cell up off the counter. Seeing that it was Tuski, she answered. She spoke for a moment then hung up and looked at Logan. "They'll be here soon. You might want to go change your shirt."

"Why? What's wrong with my shirt?"

"Nothing." Veronica shook her head, innocently.

"Shit." Logan looked down. In his rant, he'd managed to spray his pale green Tommy Bahamas button down with the dregs from the blender. "There's a reason those stupid drinks come with unbrellas." He muttered, dropping the blender into the sink and heading up the stairs.

"You like pina coladas!" she reminded him as he disappeared around the corner."And getting caught in the rain!"

Veronica watched him go, then picked up a vase of cut flowers and carried it out to the patio. She set it in the middle of the table she had already set for dinner. She looked around, pleased with her efforts. With the early evening sun slanting down through the tall cottonwoods at the back of the yard, the lawn and patio looked like something right out of a magazine spread. The lawn crew that JR had hired shortly after they'd moved in had been there that morning and the freshly mown lawn smelled as good as it looked. Any branches that had been knocked out of the trees in the latest midnight storm had also been picked up and the patio, drive and basketball court were all swept clean. The deck furniture and fire pit looked comfortable and inviting and the table settings were colorful, the dishes and napkins picking up the bright colors in the flowers she had just set amidst them. She was just about to turn back to the house when she saw Shep and Tuski come up the drive around the corner of the house.

"Hey, you found us!" she called out."That was quick!"

"Of course we did." Shep answered as he and Tuski came across the grass to the patio.

"My gosh, this place is gorgeous!" Tuski said as Shep handed Veronica the brown bag he'd been carrying.

"What's this?" she asked, looking inside. "You didn't have to bring anything."

"My Grandma would rise from the dead to beat me if I showed up empty handed." Shep answered. Veronica laughed as she lifted the six pack of Stella Atrois out of the bag.

"Look at that, Tuski. He brought me your favorite drink. That's very thoughtful, Shep. Let's go get some glasses and I'll introduce you to Logan. He should be back down in a moment."

"Great!" Shep turned toward the garage as Veronica crossed the patio to the kitchen door.

"Come on," she said, nodding toward the house. "We don't keep our glasses in the garage."

"Oh. You don't live...?"

"In the garage?" Veronica frowned. "No."

"In the apartment." Shep said, pointing toward the upper floor of the garage. Veronica's mouth fell open. She slammed it shut.

"NO." She snapped her head toward the kitchen door and turned on her heel.

Tuski and Shep glanced at each other, then followed Veronica into the house.

"Oh. My God." Tuski breathed as they entered the big, sunny kitchen with the tall dark stained cupboards, matching hardwood floor, granite conter tops, crystal light fixtures, brushed nickel drawer pulls and floor to ceiling windows that spanned the entire front wall, granting a full length view of the lake across the street.

"It's nice, isn't it?" Veronica said. "We were really lucky to get this place."

She opened the fridge and put the beer inside, so she didn't see the look of astonishment her guests exchanged. She pulled a couple of cold bottles out then turned her attention to the cupboard where they kept the glasses, looking for beer steins as Tuski drifted across the room, brushing her hand over the smooth granite island, to admire the front view.

"I think I saw this place featured in an issue of Twin Cities magazine a year or so ago." Shep said, looking around.

"This place?" Veronica said into the cupboard. "Huh."

"This is gorgeous!" Tuski exclaimed, turning from the front window. "How in the world did you manage to—" her voice died in her throat as they heard feet dancing down a nearby stairway and she saw her hostess' face transform as Veronica turned toward the sound. Tuski turned to see what put that look on Veronica's face just as someone leapt the last few stairs, came spinning around the corner and skidded barefoot into the kitchen.

"Logan!" Veronica said. "Our guests have arrived. I'd like you to meet Jeremy Sheppard and Stephanie Tuski."

"Ah! Nice to meet you." Logan greeted their guests with a broad smile as he opened his arms to embrace the room. He had changed from the short sleeved silk to a gauzy white linen shirt, the long sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

"Everyone calls me Shep," Shep said as he and Logan shook hands. "And this is Tuski."

"It is _so nice_ to meet you." Tuski offered Logan her hand. "Please; call me Stephanie."

"Do I have to?" he joked as he took her hand. "I'll be self conscious if everyone else is calling you Tuski."

"Oh." She laughed, coquettishly. "Perhaps until we know each other better, you should call me Special Agent?"

"He's already agreed to feed us, Tuski." Shep mocked. "Dial it down a notch."

"I just want the man to be comfortable in his own home!" Tuski batted her eyes at Shep.

"Good; then I won't put on any shoes." Logan smirked, looking toward his wife. "If you're looking for beer steins Veronica, I put some in the freezer earlier."

"Oh! Great." Veronica put the glasses back in the cupboard and pulled some frosty mugs out of the freezer and began to pour the beer.

"Beer?" Logan asked, coming across the kitchen. "After I sacrificed my first shirt for that pitcher of margaritas, now you're serving beer?"

"You made margaritas?" Tuski came away from the windows. "I love those!"

"A waste of perfectly good tequila." Logan and Shep said, simultaneously.

"It must be a guy thing." Veronica said as the two young men realized they were kindred souls. "We'll give them the beer and you and I can have fun drinks."

* * *

As Veronica had suspected, their four personalities clicked immediately. Logan stepped into the equation as though they'd been saving him a spot. They skipped all the formalities and get-to-know-you questions and went straight to teasing and ball busting. In addition to their disdain for adding fruit to tequila, Shep and Logan discovered a mutual fondness for golf, cigars and betting on sports. Tuski was as widely read as Logan and shared his love of Louis L'Amour. Shep admitted to a deep and profound love of all things sci-fi.

At dinner, Logan was the perfect host; funny, easy going, accommodating. Veronica was able to relax after the initial introductions, realizing that her assessment had been correct; the chemistry between the four of them was just right. It had been so long since she'd seen her husband comfortable around new people that she had forgotten how charming he could be with his guard down.

Shep regaled them with funny stories of the cases he'd worked. He told them about the time he'd spent two weeks in a van, hidden in the woods behind a suspected animal abuser's farm, so bored with the electronic surveillance that he'd found himself shouting at the monitor "Just hurry up and fuck the goat so I can go home!"

Tuski and Veronica had broken up but Logan just nodded sympathetically and said "If I had a nickel for every time I said _that_…"

"I was pretty excited when I joined the Bureau," Shep chuckled. "And I didn't even know free donkey shows would be one of the perks."

"What brought you to law enforcement, Tuski?" Logan asked.

"I studied sociology and criminology in school," she told them. "And it just seemed like criminology had a more effective track record on making the world better."

"You want to make the world better?" Veronica smiled. "Do you think that's possible?"

"Of course. So do you, whether you realize it or not." Tuski told her younger colleague as she sprinkled salt on her ear of corn.

"Do I, though? Do I really?" Veronica shook her head, stabbing at a tomato slice. "or do I just enjoy making evil doers pay for their crimes?"

"It's the same thing!" Shep pointed out. "If evil doers never had to face justice, there would be a lot more evil done, ergo; we make the world a better place."

"You do make the world a better place." Logan said, looking at Veronica.

"I didn't go into law enforcement just to lock people up," Tuski explained. "I also want to help some of them get a second chance."

"A second chance to do what?" Veronica asked. "Work the bugs out of their M.O.?"

"I think everyone deserves a second chance." Tuski said, plaintively.

"That sort of thinking is why we have repeat offenders." Shep teased her. She looked around the table for some support.

"Come, on! Don't you think most people are good, given the opportunity?" she asked Logan and Veronica.

"I think most people would resort to cannibalism, given the opportunity." Veronica said dryly.

"I _love _it that you're such a starry eyed dreamer." Logan sighed, dropping his chin into his hand and smiling at his wife.

Tuski guffawed. "Omigod! YOU," she pointed at Logan. "Are _adorable_!"

"What?" Logan asked, sitting up in surprise.

"Of all the ways we imagined Veronica's husband to be," she went on, " 'entertaining as hell' never occurred to us!"

"That's right." Shep nodded, still chuckling. "I guess profiling isn't my thing after all."

"Well, to be fair," Tuski reminded him, "all we had to go on was that Mars here, gets all gooney eyed whenever she thinks about you."

"Gooney eyed, huh?" Logan smirked at Veronica who tried to look indignant.

"I…" She gave up and started giggling. "Yeah, I do. I really do."

"Well, now you know the truth." Logan told them. "She married me for my looks. She's very shallow."

"When the package is that pretty, who cares what's inside?" Veronica snorted.

"Superficial is the new Deep." Logan raised his glass.

"Well, I think you're both adorable." Tuski shrugged.

* * *

Later on, after tons of ice cream smothered in fresh berries, whipped cream and chocolate sauce, the four of them were lounging around the fire pit, watching the embers float through the darkness up to the starlit sky. The talk had drifted back to work.

"Have you ever had to shoot anyone?" Tuski asked Shep, who had three years of field experience. Logan's eyebrows flew up at the question and he looked over at Shep.

"Nah." Shep shook his head. "If it weren't for raids like last week, I'd never have drawn my weapon in the line of duty. It's not like TV; most perps hear 'FBI!' and they freeze without even being asked."

"Thank God." Tuski said. "I know its part of the job and I think I'm ready but I'm not looking forward to the first time I have to draw my weapon on someone."

"Well, even if you do, you most likely won't have to pull the trigger." Shep said. "DEA and OCB get most of that kind of action. We're investigators, not gun slingers."

"Leg work, interrogations, research, connecting the dots and paper work." Veronica nodded. "Not so much shooting."

"What's the procedure if someone does pull the trigger?" Logan asked.

Shep gave him a brief rundown of the protocols when the bureau investigates a shooting, finishing with mandatory counseling for the agent.

"Taking a life is serious shit," Shep said. "Even though we train extensively for the eventuality, our training also teaches us how to avoid it until the absolute last resort. It's obviously better for everyone if it never comes to that."

"But sometimes it does." Logan muttered, frowning into the fire.

"Sometimes it has to." Veronica said, looking at him, knowing full well what he was talking about. "The important thing is to make sure it's the right people who get shot."

"Those situations develop in an instant. Training kicks in; you don't have time to think." Shep shrugged. "I hope I never have to plug anyone but if it ever comes down to me or him, it's gonna be him and I don't plan on losing any sleep over it."

"Me neither." Veronica said, still looking at Logan, grateful that the fire light meant the others couldn't read her expression.

"Do you think that's normal?" Logan asked Shep. "Not losing any sleep over it?"

"Depends on the case." Shep shrugged. "I suppose it would be tough if you had any doubts about the vic but if it's some asshole who throws down on a cop? You can't second guess yourself and still do the job. If you don't know that you could pull the trigger, you've got no business carrying a badge."

"You make it sound like we became agents so we could shoot people!" Tuski pointed out.

"I did." Veronica joked. "Wish I'd been an agent in highschool."

"I'll bet." Tuski chuckled, remembering the horror story Veronica had told them weeks ago. "But we aren't encouraged to run around firing on folks."

"God, no." Shep shuddered. "The paper work alone has kept my finger off the trigger guard more than once."

"So…Do you know anyone who's killed somebody?" Logan asked Shep. Veronica didn't say a word but curled her fingers around his hand.

"Sure. The first guy I partnered with was a fifteen year veteran." Shep told them. "He'd been involved in a couple of shootings. He told me he went through all the motions; the mandatory procedures and counseling to get cleared to return to the field but the truth was he never had any doubts about either situation. He told me he never lost a wink over the guys he'd shot. In fact, he admitted to me once that one of the guys was so bad, he was glad the nutsack gave him an excuse by pulling a gun on him."

"And people aren't afraid of him?" Logan asked. "Think he's a dangerous psycho?"

"Oh, he's dangerous, all right." Shep chuckled. "But if he's a psycho, so are all the great cops. He earned commendations for both shootings. There isn't an agent in the bureau who wouldn't want that guy to have their back."

"Shooting someone in self defense or the defense of others doesn't make you a killer." Veronica said, squeezing Logan's hand.

"Hell no!" Tuski said, indignantly. "It makes you a hero."

"So does stopping someone from shooting when they don't have to." Veronica said, cryptically.

"Well, I don't expect there'll be any need for that sort of heroics at the Art Institute," Logan said brightly, spinning the conversation back to lighter ground. "Although some of the crap they'll be selling might be grounds for a shooting spree."

The talk turned to the research Veronica had been doing in preparation for the upcoming event.

"Forgery, fraud, money laundering…" Tuski said. "Enough about that nonsense, cut to the chase; what are you going to wear?"

"I don't know." Veronica shrugged. "Is there a place to go shopping around here?"

"Wow." Tuski said after a brief silence. "Somewhere in the cosmos, a giant record needle just screeched right out of the groove. You know you're less than ten miles from the Mall of America?"

"Ooh, that's embarrassing." Logan muttered, cutting his eyes toward his wife.

"Don't go to the mall." Shep grimaced.

"What do you mean?" Tuski rounded on him. "She's got a five hundred dollar bureau credit card to spend on clothes! Veronica; get thee to the MOA."

"Really? Five hundred?" Logan asked.

"Yeah." Veronica grinned at him.

"Cute."

"I hate that place. Too damn big." Shep muttered.

"You hate to shop." Tuski told him. "Typical guy."

"I love to shop." Logan said, tossing a twig onto the fire. "We'll go tomorrow."

* * *

It was well after midnight when Tuski and Shep finally made their way back out to Shep's rig parked on the street. They didn't speak until they were both buckled up and Shep put the key in the ignition. He didn't turn it.

"That was fun." He said, looking at her.

"I'm not crazy, am I?" She answered. "That was him, wasn't it?"

"Yes." Shep nodded. "He's bigger than he was in those old videos but I recognized him right away."

"Me too! I mean, I was floored by that house and my head was spinning but then he came flying into the room and for a second it was like falling through the looking glass for the second time in two minutes but then it all fell into place and made perfect sense!"

"Yeah," Shep was still nodding. His experience had been identical. "The address, that house, her reluctance to talk about him, the protectiveness…"

"She _married_ Logan Echolls." Tuski breathed, shaking her head.

"Do you know how much _he's worth_?" Shep whistled softly.

"She said being cute wouldn't get her out of the bull pen." Tuski remembered. "But that being rich might. I thought she was kidding." She looked at Shep. "I really like him."

"Me too." Shep nodded as he turned the key. Then engine roared to life and he pulled from the curb. "No big mystery as to why he took her name."

"Do you think we should tell them we know?" Tuski asked after a minute or so. "It seems…like an unfair advantage that we know so much about him and he doesn't know we do."

"I don't know." Shep frowned, thinking. "They may tell us themselves. If not, they have their reasons. Why bring it up?"

"Oh, Lord. I actually asked her if she'd won the lottery!"

"She won the lottery, all right." Shep chuckled.

"She doesn't give a shit about the money. Did you see the way they looked at each other?"

"Well, they are newlyweds."

"No." Tuski shook her head. "They've known each other since they were kids. That look isn't going away."

"Probably not."

"I want someone to look at me like that." Tuski said, plaintively.

"Everyone wants that."

* * *

They didn't speak again until Shep pulled up in front of Tuski's apartment. As the engine died, she turned and looked him in the eye.

"Do you think you'll ever look at me like that?" she asked him. "'Cause if the answer is 'no'…"

"Stephanie," he cut her off and turned toward her on the seat. "I've been looking at you like that for months."

"Oh." She smiled. "Maybe you'd better come inside."

To Be Continued...


	31. Chapter 31 Loganomics

Chapter 31 Loganomics

Veronica staggered down to the kitchen Sunday morning, shielding her eyes from the bright sunshine. Logan was already sprawled at the table with sections of the newspaper strewn all around him, a large glass of orange juice, a cup of coffee and a plate of French toast in front of him.

"I think I'm a little hung over," she complained, dropping into a chair near her husband and laying her head in her arms.

"JR." Logan said, without looking up from the paper. Immediately, JR placed a large tumbler full of tomato juice and two aspirin in front of Veronica, who lifted her head.

"No, just coffee." She said gazing wistfully at the mug he held in his other hand.

"Drink the tomato juice first," JR instructed, holding the mug out of her reach. "Then you can have coffee."

"Things are going to get very ugly very quickly if you don't give me that coffee _now_." Veronica said through gritted teeth.

"Seriously, Mars; drink the juice. You'll thank me for it later."

"Fine, if it'll make you stop talking." She popped the pills, picked up the glass, drained it and slammed it back onto the table. "Now let me have my coffee before I kill you."

"It's the margaritas." Logan said, sympathetically. "They're evil."

"Not evil; they just behave badly when they get together in large packs. Like teenagers or suburban housewives." Veronica thanked JR as he handed her a large hot cup of coffee. She sipped her coffee and looked around the kitchen. "Did we clean up in here last night?"

"No." Logan reminded her. "We decided to leave it till morning, like normal people would."

"Of course, at the stroke of midnight, you two turned back into golden plated pumpkins," JR said, placing a plate of French toast in front of Veronica, "knowing perfectly well that I'd have everything ship shape around here before you crawled out of bed."

"Admit it," Veronica said without a shred of guilt for leaving their mess the night before, "if you had found this place spic and span this morning, wouldn't you have felt a teensy bit of concern for your job security?"

"No." JR answered, heading out the back door. "Eat up; Tucker'll be here in twenty minutes."

"We shouldn't have made JR clean up everything." Veronica told Logan as she dug into her breakfast. "It's enough that he gets up early and makes us these delicious breakfasts!"

"I went along with the grocery shopping, the food prep and every other detail attendant on entertaining our guests last night. I don't mind indulging you in this little charade of 'just plain folks' but I draw the line at cleaning up after myself."

"You were great last night." She smiled.

"Was I?" He lowered the paper and looked at her. "I thought I was just average. I know we set the bar pretty high so our average is still pretty damn good but 'great'?" he shook his head. "I don't know."

"I meant before that. I know you're not used to that kind of stuff."

"I am familiar with the concept of grocery shopping, you know."

"Oh, I know. But your life has been all caterers and room service and JR making sure your every wish is fulfilled before you even know what you want."

"Sounds awesome. What's the problem?"

"That's not a social life; it's a production number."

"Last night wasn't a production?" he teased her.

"Well, of course." She conceded. "But it was a small scale production, not a Technicolor extravaganza featuring a cast of thousands. We're talking the difference between Quentin Tarrantino and Busby Berkley."

"I like to think my life is more Guy Ritchie than Quentin Tarrantino."

"Sometimes I think it's totally Baz Lurman. Isn't it nice to know that you can function in the real world, with real people?"

"It was fun." Logan admitted. "I always knew I could function in the real world with…what did you call them? Real people. I've been passing myself off as a real person for years, now."

"Is that what you've been doing? Maybe I've been listening to JR too much."

"We probably shouldn't have left that mess for him to clean up."

"Oh, now you're just talking crazy." Veronica finished her breakfast and picked up their dishes and put them in the dishwasher. "I gotta go change before Tucker gets here."

"So are you saying I _was_ just average last night?" he called after her as she headed for the stairs. She spun around and threw a smoldering smile his way.

"If your 'average' gets any better, it'll kill me." She said before disappearing up the stairs.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, the three of them stood in the gym downstairs, ready for their morning workout with their kick boxing coach.

"I hope you're good and WARMED UP." Joe Tucker barked. "I just DOUBLE BOGEYED eighteen for a SEVENTY."

"Oh, shit!" Logan said, sympathetically.

"I have no idea what that means." Veronica said.

"It means he's going to try to kill us now." JR groaned.

* * *

A little over an hour later, the three of them sat on the patio, sweaty, bruised and exhausted. JR held a bag of ice to his shoulder.

"Wow," Veronica sighed, after drinking deeply from her tall glass of ice water. "Who crawled up Tucker's ass and died?"

"He double bogeyed eighteen for a _seventy_!" Logan explained.

"So?" his weary, golf illiterate wife asked.

"That means he approached eighteen at four under par and blew it!" JR shook his head in sympathy.

"So?" she reapeated.

"If I were looking at breaking seventy on the eighteenth tee with a four stroke cushion and double bogeyed, I'd want to throw myself off a cliff." Logan said, emphatically.

"Well, what do you expect?" Veronica asked, unsympathetically. "The people who invented golf and called it a game are the same guys who invented the bagpipes and called it music." She took another swig of ice water and grinned. "I feel a lot better, though. Nothing cures a hangover like beating the crap out of someone!"

"You didn't beat the crap out of me." JR protested, adjusting his bag of ice. "Besides, it was the tomato juice."

"I've found that beating the crap out of someone cures most anything that ails you." Logan admitted. "It's always worked for me."

"I seem to remember it getting you in a lot of trouble over the years." Veronica mused. "But I think I'm beginning to understand the cathartic value of violence."

"I thought the point of catharsis was to avoid violence." JR frowned.

"Men need violence." Logan said with confidence. "It's in our genes. If we can't get it through combat, we find it in sports. I'm not just talking football and boxing, either. Even non contact sports like tennis and golf are inherently violent; smacking that ball a mile or a hundred miles an hour. We need to beat stuff every once in a while."

Veronica and JR looked at him.

"That's not what I meant." Logan said and then he laughed. "Or maybe it is."

"It's a wonder more of you aren't blind." Veronica said, cryptically. Just then, the doorbell rang. JR stood and went to see who was bothering them at lunchtime on a gorgeous Saturday. A moment later he returned, followed by a very excited Candy.

"Hey. What's up?" Logan asked as Candy fluttered about the patio, sputtering like a butterfly about to run out of gas.

"I'm so…I don't even…I mean, I don't, I can't OMIGOD!" Candy said, bouncing and skipping around on the stones.

"I found him like this out front." JR deadpanned. "I only brought him back because I don't want the neighbors to think we were running a meth lab."

"This is the best day of my life!" Candy was now simply jumping up down in place, waving his arms. "The BEST the BEST THE BEST!"

"DUDE." Logan cried. "What is going on?"

"How long do you think he can keep this up?" Veronica asked, watching Candy bounce.

"This is my happy dance because _I'm so excited_." Candy continued to dance around, then he suddenly collapsed into a chair, his slim form simply going boneless in an instant.

"Well, that didn't take too long." Veronica shrugged and looked at Logan.

"I think he may have had a seizure." Logan said. "Should we call someone?"

"I could just toss his limp ass out of here." JR offered, taking a step toward the chair in which Candy drooped.

"DON'T TOUCH ME." Candy's head popped up and he glared briefly at JR. "I'm fine. I'm GREAT." To prove it, he bounced out of the chair and landed next to the table. "It's just that I got really, really, really,_ really_ good news today and I wanted to tell you guys." He resumed his happy dance.

"Well, are you going to tell us or do I have to go upstairs and get the sodium pentothal?" Veronica asked.

"Don't get up, Sweet cheeks; I'll beat it out of him." Her husband offered.

"Oh, please let me!" JR volunteered.

"Sit down! Everyone just sit down!" Candy cried. He grinned broadly and put his hands to his face, looking like a kid who had just discovered Santa's workshop. "I got in! I. GOT. _IN_!"

"To…the circus?" Veronica guessed.

"NO!" Candy laughed. "The Aveda Institute! It's what I've wanted for like ever and it's actually gonna happen! I can't even believe it."

"Oh, that's great!" Veronica cried. "Congratulations!"

"Was there some chance of you not getting in?" Logan asked.

"Well, yeah!" Candy exclaimed. "I'd only saved about half the tuition when I quit my dumb ass job with that bitch Bruce so I didn't even apply but I guess I won a scholarship! The whole thing is paid for, _can you believe it_? Now I can use the money I saved for rent and food and shit while I go to school! I don't even have to choose hair or makeup, the scholarship covers the whole curriculum! The whole fuckin' thing!"

"Candy, that's fantastic!" Veronica said, happily. "When do you start?"

"The next session begins in about two weeks." Now that his good news wasn't threatening to explode out of him, Candy was able to relax enough to sit at the table. "I just got the admission letter this morning, explaining about the scholarship. For like, an hour I was totally in shock, then I thought maybe it was a joke or something 'cus I don't even remember applying for a scholarship, so I called down there and the lady told me it's no joke, I'm registered and my tuition's paid in full. So I came here to tell you guys 'cus I knew you'd get it."

They did get it. Logan sent JR into the house to get the fixings for mimosas, which seemed the proper drink for a Saturday morning toast to good fortune.

"Are we the first people you told?" Veronica asked as she sipped her drink.

"Fuck no, I told my Mom first." Candy laughed. "Not my dad though. I just can't get into it with him, again."

"Does he have a problem with you being an esthetician?" Veronica asked, sympathetically.

"He'll just think its further proof that I'm gay," Candy sighed.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that," Logan murmured.

"I suppose he wants you to go into a more manly field, like choreography or women's shoe design?" JR asked.

"He doesn't have a problem with what I want to do," Candy said, shaking his head, "but if I have to hear the 'don't worry son, we'll love you no matter what' speech again, I swear I'm going to rob a liquor store and knock up my girlfriend."

"Um. What?" Logan asked, confused.

"Yeah, he's been trying to drag me out of the closet since I was twelve." Candy sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face. "Every time I tell him there is no closet, he freaks out. He thinks I'm pretending to be straight just to wreck his career." Seeing the blank looks on their faces, Candy explained, "He's an administrator with the state university system; as a white, protestant male he's not diverse enough to break into the upper echelons of management but he thinks having a gay son just may give his career the boost it needs. Don't' get me wrong; I love my dad but I'm not gonna pound dudes just to improve his job prospects."

"You have your standards." Logan nodded in support.

"Fuck yeah. I'll have to tell him eventually but today I just wanted to enjoy it. I was so excited after I got off the phone I couldn't stop screaming!"

"You screamed?" JR winced.

"Yeah but it was a totally manly scream." Candy assured them. "Totally."

"No such thing." JR snorted.

"Sure there is." Veronica quickly corrected him, suppressing her own memory of manly screams. "Haven't you ever seen Braveheart? Tons of manly screaming."

"And every one of those men in a skirt." JR retorted.

"Ah yes; Scotland! The land of golf, bagpipes and manly men in skirts; screaming." Logan chortled.

"To the future!" Veronica turned to Candy. "May it be beautifully coiffed and made up!"

"With all natural products!" Candy answered.

"So, once you've started beauty school, does that mean you won't have time to hang out here anymore?" JR asked. "Bummer."

"You know what? Not even you can crumble my biscuits on a day like this." Candy said, still smiling as he stood up and faced JR. "After all; my dreams are coming true. How about you? Have you always wanted to be a maid?"

"Touché!" Logan snickered as Candy skipped back through the house on that parting shot.

"Crumble his biscuits?" Veronica echoed, bemused.

JR rolled a baleful eye at his employer. "I hope you're happy," he groused.

"Oh, that was worth every penny." Logan smirked.

* * *

"I've got three dresses here," Veronica said, holding up the hangars. "Let's find the fitting room."

She and Logan were in Macy's at the Mall of America. The place was packed.

"So much for the bad economy," Logan had commented as they threaded their way through the throng. "No one told 'em they're a paycheck from the bread line, I guess."

"Most of them are probably just looking." Veronica said. "You know; for fun."

"What's fun about looking at stuff they can't have? Isn't that just frustrating?"

"What, you never looked at a Playboy?" Veronica teased.

"Of course I did," He looked down at her, a confused v between his eyes. "what's your point?"

Veronica looked at him, a retort on the tip of her tongue when the vision of Kendall Casablancas flashed across her mind. It took a full body shudder to banish the memory.

"The delusions of young men aside," she said, deciding to ignore Logan's world view as they made their way to the women's clothing department, "There's a great sense of satisfaction in finding that elusive bargain that not only fits but looks great. Anyone can put together a fantastic outfit for a thousand bucks; the real accomplishment is in putting it together for a hundred."

"A thousand bucks?" Logan shook his head and rubbed his hands together. "Forget all that, Sugarpuss. You're playing in my arena now."

"I know!" she chortled as they got off the escalator, surrounded by a sea of women and clothes. "I've got the bureau credit card burning a hole in my bag! I don't get to keep the clothes but at least I can shop with impunity!"

"Yeah, punitive shopping must suck." He muttered as she began to rifle through the clearance rack.

"I'm going to try these three," she said, pointing him to a chair outside the fitting room. "You wait here and give me thumbs up or down."

He didn't like any of them. In fact, while Veronica was changing back into her own clothes, he went looking for a sales woman. Veronica came out of the fitting room to find her husband gone. She looked around for a moment and then pulled out her phone with a sigh. She had too much to do to spend half her afternoon playing 'where's Logan?'

"Logan," she said when he picked up, "If you didn't want to do this, you could have stayed home."

"Cool your jets, Sweet cheeks. I came along to make sure you did this right." He said. "Those frocks you tried on weren't really what we're looking for. Just wait for me; I'm almost there."

As he spoke, she caught sight of him. He was followed by a Macy's employee, carrying several gowns, not a one of which came off a sales rack.

"Veronica, this is Jamie." Logan said, nodding toward the girl carrying the pile of clothes. "She's here to help."

"Oh, you're a petite!" Jamie said, giving Veronica a once over. "Are you planning on wearing heels or should I go back and see if we have petite sizes?"

"I'll be wearing heels." Veronica told her.

"Size six." Logan turned to Jamie. "Grab us a pair with a…how tall do you want to be, Sugarpuss?"

"How tall do I have to be?" Veronica held up a gown. She needed at least three inches.

"I'll go find a pair for you." Jamie said. "Be right back."

"What are you doing?" Veronica asked Logan as Jamie threaded her way to women's shoes.

"Showing you what shopping with impunity looks like." He told her. "You may know your way around a produce section but you're lost in here. You don't want a dress off the clearance rack. You need shoes or none of these will drape properly. Whatever she brings doesn't matter, they're just to give the gowns a chance to prove themselves."

"Is this what Kate Middleton goes through?" Veronica sighed, setting aside the gowns she didn't like.

"She wouldn't go out shopping like this." Logan said with a snort. "The designers bring the clothes to her."

"Oh. This is nice." Veronica held up a pale yellow gown with a rhinestone setting at the neckline.

"I thought you wanted to wear your garnets." Logan said with a grimace. "Yellow?"

"Oh. You're right." She set the yellow one aside so Logan was spared the necessity of pointing out how tacky the rhinestones were. In a moment, Jamie returned with a pair of four inch heels with a two inch platform.

"These will make your legs look two miles long!" she said as she handed the pumps to Veronica. "Helen Mirren always wears a similar style to create that illusion."

"Can't go wrong emulating Dame Mirren!" Logan said with exaggerated enthusiasm. Veronica rolled her eyes at him but she took the pumps and several dresses into the fitting room.

Veronica had already rejected everything from the stack of gowns that wouldn't flatter her necklace. In the next half hour, she tried on six or seven dresses and Logan found fault with every one of them. They thanked Jamie and headed out into the mall.

"Well that was discouraging." Logan said.

"Especially for Jamie. I hope she isn't working purely on commission." Veronica said, feeling a little guilty.

"You don't buy something you don't like just because you feel sorry for the sales girl." Logan said, dismissing her guilt.

"You don't?"

"No. You only do that when you're trying to sleep with the sales girl and frankly, I don't think Jamie was really your type."

"You know me so well." Veronica said. "Come on; There's a whole lotta mall out there."

Walking out of Macy's into the greater Mall caused them both to stop in their tracks. The place went on forever. They were in the corner of a corridor as broad as a lobby, which snaked off in either direction as far as the eye could see but that's not what caught their attention.

"There's a roller coaster in here." Logan said, staring at the amusement park in the distance.

"Oh! We may not have time for that." Veronica said wistfully as she consulted a map of the place. "We can go left to Bloomingdale's or right to Nordstrom's. What do you think, Kemosabe?"

"Nordstrom's" Logan decided. "We'll cut through to Bloomies and if the only way across the mall involves a roller coaster ride, so be it."

A quarter mile later they made their way into Nordstrom's, having only stopped to acquire a new skin care/shaving kit for Logan, a gorgeous calfskin hobo bag for Veronica and a new pair of sunglasses for each of them. After all, who can't use another pair of sunglasses? And Veronica had to admit, she did look fabulous in a large, tortoise shell pair by Alexander McQueen. So she let Logan buy them for her, along with the pair by Hugo Boss he picked up for himself. She wasn't so accommodating when Logan was distracted by no less than three jewelry shops between Macy's and Nordstrom's. She had to drag him from the displays of cocktail rings.

"You need a ring." He said, looking at a display of rubies and pink sapphires. "The set I gave you for your birthday didn't include one."

"They are very pretty," She said, admiring the tray full of rings, all priced between one and three hundred dollars. "But we don't have time for that today." She pulled him away from the bling.

A moment later, Logan used the same argument to keep her out of an enormous DSW.

"You start looking at shoes and we'll still be here at last call." He warned.

"Last call? It's not a bar." She whined as he dragged her from the entrance. "Look at all the pretty!"

"Lots of pretty in Nordstrom's." He insisted, keeping her moving forward.

He was singing a different tune a half an hour later. They had corralled a saleslady and Veronica had asked to see every evening gown in her size and price range.

One by one, Logan gave them each thumbs down. When she came out wearing the last of the dresses, she took one look at his face and said in frustration "You're too picky!"

"Do you like it?" He challenged. She looked down at the dress she was wearing. The fabric was a thin synthetic, the cut wasn't too particular and the fit wasn't as good as it could have been.

"It's fine." she said, unconvincingly.

"Here you are, sir." The saleslady said as she returned with another stack of gowns which she proceeded to hang on the rack in the fitting room entrance.

"What's this?" Veronica looked from Logan to the woman.

"I asked her to bring another batch of dresses." Logan told her. "Try a couple on; just see if you like them."

Veronica ran her hand along the new line of gowns. She could tell at a glance that these were a better quality of craftsmanship than the dresses she'd tried on so far. The fabrics alone were richer and more luxurious. She turned a price tag.

"Logan," she said in an undertone, "this dress is $790.00."

"Don't worry about it." He turned to the saleslady. "Could you give us a minute?"

Veronica watched her glide away, then rounded on her husband."You know I only have five hundred on here!" she hissed as she slapped the bureau card on the fitting room desk.

Logan picked the card up gingerly with his thumb and forefinger. "Put that thing away," he handed it back to her with a look of distaste. "I'll spring for the dress."

"I don't want the dress." She shook her head.

"Well, not that dress in particular." He gestured toward the rack of gowns. "Try them on; you might like something."

"I don't want a seven hundred dollar dress!" she hissed. "It's too much!"

"It's not. Look; there will be girls at this thing wearing cut rate knock offs, that's true. But the rest of them, the ones you're trying to get next to? They'll recognize the cheap frocks from across the room. You know I'm right. Shit, Lilly could spot a fake Gucci from the real thing at twelve paces."

"I don't think—"

"The girls wearing the knock offs aren't the ones who are going to be bidding high for anything. They aren't even going to be the dates of the guys you're interested in. You want to allay suspicion? Get them to trust you? First step; make them think you're one of them."

"Frack." Veronica couldn't tell a Gucci from twelve paces but she recognized the truth when she heard it.

"Try on the dresses." Logan could smell victory as Veronica cut her eyes at him, then turned dolefully toward the rack of much more expensive gowns.

"It really shouldn't piss me off so much when you're right." She sighed, picking out several dresses to take and try on.

"It's not that I'm right that pisses you off," Logan said as she disappeared once again into the dressing room. "It's the fact that you're wrong."

Wrong or not, Veronica didn't like any of the gowns in the second batch, either. An hour, two stores and a ride on a roller coaster later, the pair of them sat at a table on the edge of Nickelodeon Universe, eating cotton candy. Despite the pile of bags on the table, an evening gown was not among their purchases and Veronica was frustrated.

"Do you remember Home Coming?" she asked. Logan looked at her. Veronica knew he remembered the last time the fab four had been together, just weeks before Lilly died. "The dress I wore cost $69.00. My mom and I bought it at Dress Barn."

"You looked gorgeous." Logan said, ripping off a huge hunk of spun sugar and cramming it in his mouth.

"Lilly hated that dress." Veronica smiled at the memory. "She said I was hiding my hotness from the world and that I should be wearing red satin."

"Red satin with garnets?" Logan looked doubtful.

"I wore red to Home Coming the next year. When I went with Troy."

"Troy." Logan snorted. "I couldn't stand that guy."

"You were friends!"

"He was Duncan's friend, not mine."

"Why'd you go to Tijuana with him, then?"

"I'd go to T.J. with anyone back then. God, he was a douche."

"Ohmigod! You were jealous!" Veronica was delighted.

"Damn straight I was." Logan continued to cram cotton candy in his mouth. "I couldn't figure out what you saw in him."

"He was nice to me." Veronica grimaced, remembering her two faced, lying, drug dealing Homecoming date.

"He was an oleaginous turd." Logan stuffed the now empty paper cone into the trash can behind his chair as though it held the memory of Troy Vandegraff.

"All true." Veronica sighed, remembering the disgust she'd felt when she and Wallace had run into Troy a year later at Hearst. She looked mischievously at Logan. "But he wasn't even the worst guy you ever went to Mexico with!"

"Maybe Troy's in the pen, too." Logan looked hopeful. The day that Mercer had been convicted had gone a long way toward restoring their faith in the judicial system, which had been so sorely tried by Aaron's acquittal.

"My point," Veronica explained, "is that red satin or not, I have never been a 'blow the mortgage money on a dress' sort of girl."

"Then relax; we don't have a mortgage." Her extremely wealthy husband reminded her. "And there's no way I'm buying you a dress at the Cow Farm."

"Dress Barn."

"Whatever."

"The tag on that last dress was over $1200." She shuddered at the memory.

"They cost what they cost. The fact is we can afford any one of the dresses you tried on. Hell, we can afford _all _of them. Bottom line is; you didn't want any of them."

"The price tags made me sick to my stomach." She admitted.

"The trick is to find the dress that makes you not care what it costs."

"I never thought I could be one of those women." Veronica said, shaking her head. "You know what I mean; you see those stories of some celebutard who spent $100,000 on her wedding dress and you just think 'how could she'? That's _house_ money, not dress money!"

"There's your problem." He leaned towards her, elbows on the table. "You're looking at it all wrong."

"There's no other way to see it!"

"Have you ever seen a hundred thousand dollar dress?"

"Of course not."

"It would probably be made of something so soft you can barely feel it; a silk or cashmere. My guess is it was covered with crystal beads, thousands of them; each placed and stitched by hand in an intricate pattern, meticulously laid out by the artist who designed it. The fabric probably cost hundreds a yard and that's before the designer so much as lays a hand on it. The crystals probably run twice as much as the fabric. The designer isn't some third world orphan in a sweat shop but a talented, trained professional who makes the big bucks because they have a vision unlike anyone else; they produce things no one else ever thought up. Any idea how many man hours might go into a project like that? From conception to execution, I'm thinking hundreds. Maybe thousands. For a hundred grand, you're not just buying a dress; you're buying a work of art."

"That's bullshit."

"If it weren't for the very rich being able to pay vast amounts of money to the very talented, there would be no Taj Mahal, no St. Basil's cathedral, no Sistine Chapel. Enzo Ferrari would have been stuck designing K cars and Yves St. Laurent would've been some nobody who spent his career working in the French patent office."

"All three of those structures were built or decorated on the orders of imperial despots." Veronica had already lost one battle today, she wasn't about to give this one up without a fight. "Legend has it that Ivan the Terrible blinded the architect so nothing like St. Basil's could be recreated elsewhere, but historians think that's just a myth. The story that Pope Julius II coerced Michelangelo with the threat of excommunication is more widely accepted."

"After two and a half years on my back painting the ceiling, you'd probably have to threaten eternal damnation to get me to finish, too. We're talking two kings and a pope, all of whom paid pretty damn well, I'd bet. My point remains; without the chapel, Michelangelo never gets his name on a ninja turtle."

"The patent office?" she cocked her head at him.

"Yeah." He smirked. "With that other loser; Albert Whatsisface."

"So you're saying that it's good that some things cost a lot of money."

"I'm saying that if no one is willing to pay for wonderful things, no one will be able to afford to create wonderful things."

"You really are the King of Capitalism, aren't you?"

"Conspicuous consumption is the only honest form of income redistribution. You and all your socialist pals get it wrong because you only look at where the money starts and not where it ends up. You said $100K is house money. You're right. By paying for a $100,000 dress, the celebutard does get to feel really special but so what? The important thing is that the designer and every seamstress and cutter who worked on the dress gets to pay their mortgages for a few months."

"Are you trying to convince me that spending that kind of money is altruistic?"

"Fuck altruism." Logan dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. "The beauty of capitalism is that it doesn't depend on the kindness of strangers. It makes people's innate selfishness work for everyone."

"Selfishness being the only truly sustainable resource." Veronica nodded.

"We must harness its power for good instead of evil." Logan gestured dramatically.

"This is your philosophy of economics?" Veronica rested her chin on her hand.

"I'm just trying to get you to think like a rich person."

"Like the people who will be at the auction."

"Exactly."

Veronica sat back in her chair and looked out across the amusement park. Over 2 million square feet of retail space, including 520 stores employing over 12,000 people, all of whom would be out of work if everyone stopped spending money. She cut her eyes at the bags on the table, each emblazoned with the names of the stores they'd patronized. _Don't think of where the money starts; think of where it ends. It ends in jobs. _

"Think like a rich person." She said out loud.

"That's what you have to do if you're going to get anywhere with this case." Logan nodded.

"Okay. I can do that." She stood up. "But not today. I've had enough for now."

They gathered up their shopping bags and went looking for an exit that would lead them back to their car.

"And I'm not a socialist."

* * *

The next morning, Logan skipped the lake. Instead, he closeted himself in the office after breakfast and after a few phone calls had tracked down an old family friend.

"Logan darling, is that really you?" Jen Becker's voice betrayed her surprise to hear from the son of one of her favorite clients after all these years.

"It is I," Logan said, dramatically. "Or at least my disembodied voice. How are you, Ms. B?"

"I'm doing really well. I still miss your Mom. None of my other clients have her sense of style, I'm afraid."

"Isn't _your_ sense of style why you make the big bucks?" Logan asked. Jen had been Lynn's stylist for most of her career and the two had been close friends. Logan had been just as snotty and rude to her as he was to all his parent's acquaintances when he was growing up but Ms. B's unrelenting patience and friendliness had worn him down until he realized he actually liked her. Her visits to the house to help Lynn prepare for an upcoming event were some of the only contacts with Hollywood culture that he had enjoyed. It helped that his Mom had always been in a great frame of mind after spending a day or two with Ms. B.

She was one of the few women Aaron had never hit on. Like most predators, he'd instinctively recognized her as an unlikely conquest. Her loyalty made her an extremely rare type of woman in Hollywood and it was that, as well as her excellent taste and unique sense of style that guaranteed her success and made her a great favorite among her clients.

She had been one of the few sincerely distraught mourners at Logan's mother's funeral. She hadn't stayed very long, having quickly taken the temperature of the event but she had sought out Logan for a few words of condolence.

"_You call me if you ever need anything, Okay?" she had told him. "I mean that. If you ever need _anything_."_

He'd barely listened; at the time, he'd still believed that his mom was alive. It was only years later that it occurred to him that a great stylist was akin to a therapist and Ms. B probably knew things about his childhood that he'd never even shared with Veronica. It was easy to put Ms. B out of his mind and he'd filed her away with all the other people and events he never wanted to revisit but now he was glad that he remembered her.

He wanted her help and it had nothing to do with the offer she'd made back when he was still in high school.

He quickly filled her in on the situation, the event and especially the girl's qualms about spending too much.

"Kid, you know perfectly well none of my clients ever sees a price tag." Jen assured him. Satisfied, Logan detailed his requirements, gave her Veronica's measurements and told her to messenger everything to Sam Horshack's office in San Diego, ASAP.

"So, who is this girl who won't let you to spend money on her?" Ms. B asked. "She must be something else."

"She's…definitely something else." Logan smiled. "One of the things I love about her is that she doesn't give a shit, excuse me; doesn't care at all about this sort of thing."

"_One_ of the things you love about her?" Jen was delighted. She had seen Lynne's son turn from a bright, exuberant youngster into a dark, surly teen. Like the rest of the world, she had watched the disintegration of the Echolls family from afar. She was more than a little relieved to hear Logan sounding like a happy adult. Despite the years that had passed, it was easy to fall right back into their friendly rhythm."Sounds serious. Any chance I'll be reading about wedding bells in your future?"

"None whatsoever." Logan grinned.

* * *

Monday morning, Veronica had been with Agent LeSuer, studying the installations listed in the auction brochure for a little over an hour when she was summoned to Section Chief Larson's office.

"Fine. Take these home tonight," LeSuer passed the brochure and a book on post modernism across the table towards the younger agent. "You're coming along fine but the terms need to be second nature. Study these."

"Yes ma'am!" Veronica gathered up the books but she knew from experience that saying nonsense with confidence was more important than getting the terminology correct without it. She was sure she was ready to talk art with the curator of the institute without sounding any more ignorant than your average sucker_. Art patron, I mean art patron,_ she mentally corrected herself as she left the room.

Upstairs, Cheryl waved her into the Section Chief's office. Larson was on the phone but motioned her to a chair. Veronica kept a carefully neutral expression on her face as she took a seat.

"Yes. I'll pass that message on. Thank you." He hung up the phone.

Silence settled over the office like a wool blanket on a hot, sultry day. Larson fixed her with a glare.

Veronica waited.

Finally, Larson shook his head. "Mars," his voice was low, "did I not tell you on two separate occasions that I would contact someone at OCB for you?"

"You did, indeed." She answered promptly.

"And did I also not tell you to refrain from any attempts to contact them yourself?"

"Did you?"

"Don't play dumb with me…" He began, sternly.

"Did you contact them, sir?" she clarified.

"I just got off the phone with the OCB field office in Chicago."

"Oh, thank you, sir!"

"Don't thank me." He scowled. "I didn't call them; they called me. Can you guess why?"

"No sir. I don't have a contact at OCB; that's the problem." She reminded him.

"They called to ask me if the agent in my office who has been testing their security systems is a threat, against whom they need to file an injunction or if you were working under my orders, in which case who the hell did I think I was, trying to break into their secure systems?"

Veronica's mind skipped right past uh-oh and got straight to the point. "What did you tell them?"

"_What did I tell them?" _Larson parroted her, incredulously.

"I'm sorry, sir." Veronica said, contritely. "I never meant to get you in trouble but after our disagreement over drawing Logan into this case, I was afraid you'd had second thoughts about helping me look into the Russian threat. I'm sorry that I made your office look bad; I never meant to get you in trouble."

"Fuck that; they're pissed because you made them look bad. They may be a bunch of elitist assholes but they don't outrank us and their office has no higher clearance than mine. They run around being all secretive because it makes them feel like they're hot shit. The whole idea that OCB is an untouchable team of agents, a cut above the bureau is nothing but self promoted bullshit. They can't touch me or any agent under my command. I'm not in any trouble with them; _you're_ in trouble with _me_."

"Oh." Veronica cocked her head, curiously. She hadn't seen Larson so angry before.

"When I tell an agent under my command that I will do something, I expect that agent to trust me!" Larson fired at her. "I do NOT expect nor do I find it acceptable for that agent to go behind my back to accomplish what I EXPRESSLY told her not to do."

"You didn't tell me not to do it."

"_WHAT?" _ Larson sputtered. He'd never had the experience of being flatly contradicted by an agent he was trying to chew out. It threw him off stride.

"You told me I'd never get through but you never forbid me to try. I _told_ you I'm very persistent. I happen to think that my tenacity is an asset, not a liability. Believe me, sir; when you give me a job to do, it will get done no matter what it takes or how long. That's just the way I'm built."

"NO ONE GAVE YOU THIS JOB." Larson jumped up from his seat in his anger and leaned across his desk.

"So I took the initiative!" Veronica was unimpressed with her boss looming over her. "Since when is that a bad trait in an investigator? You can't accuse me of going behind your back when I told you right up front what I needed and why."

"MARS." Larson made a visible effort to control himself. He took a deep breath and glared at his rookie agent who looked infuriatingly calm and sure of her own position. He abandoned the tactic he recognized as fruitless and tried another. "How long has it been since your altercation with Gory Sorokin?"

"It all happened four years ago."

"Four years." He repeated, glaring at her. "You haven't heard from him in _four years_ yet you couldn't wait a few more weeks until I had a chance to help you out?"

"I haven't been waiting for four years, sir!" Veronica pointed out. "I had my PI license before I'd ever heard of Gory Sorokin and I've used all the resources at my disposal but I've never been able to find a trace of him."

"Has it occurred to you that his loving family may have shipped his stupid ass to Siberia?"

"There's never been any indication of a passenger matching his description on any such flight or proof that he was on board any private jet the Russians may have used."

Only years of training kept Larson's expression from betraying the surprise he felt. Agent Mars was very serious about her search for Gory Sorokin. A discouraging thought crossed his mind.

"Did you join the bureau just to further your personal agenda?"

"NO. Sir, I applied for the internship…I was _accepted_ into the intern program before I'd ever heard of Gory Sorokin."

"You do realize how this looks?"

"As investigators, aren't we trained to ignore how things _look_ and seek the truth? You know I'm not interested in any of OCB's secrets. I just want some help in assessing a threat and I don't know where else to go."

"I know." Larson sighed, all the righteous anger draining out of him. "That's what I told them."

"You did?" Veronica perked up in surprise. "Are they going to help me?"

"I don't know." Larson shrugged as he sat back down in his chair. "Those snotty little pricks wouldn't tell me anything. I think they only called to let me know that they knew what you were up to."

"Oh." Veronica couldn't help letting her disappointment show. "Well, now what?"

"Now you go back to work on the assignment you actually have and knock it off with your harassment of other agencies." Larson looked at her, sternly. "OCB is aware of your request. You will do nothing unless or until they contact you. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

"I understand."

"I'm forbidding you, Mars." He reiterated.

"Yes, sir."

"You will NOT make any further attempts to contact anyone at OCB."

"Yes, sir."

"I want to hear you say it."

Veronica rolled her eyes, stood up and put her right hand over her heart and raised her left. "I, Special Agent Veronica Mars, do solemnly swear not to try to contact OCB…"

"Good."

"…or piss off my section chief anymore than is absolutely necessary to get the job done." She finished.

"You have tried my patience enough for one day, Mars." Larson said, not a trace of a smile on his face. "Get the hell out of my office."

* * *

"Hey, Logan." Sam answered the phone in his office. "What's up?"

After getting expelled from Hearst for taking an exam for a fellow student, Sam Horshack had gotten into SDSU where he had assuaged his father's disappointment in him by overloading his credits and taking a full course load right through the summer semesters, getting his BS in business management and his MA in accounting in slightly under four years.

Twice weekly therapy sessions also helped Sam to extricate himself from the unhealthy, subservient relationship with Rafe. With the help of his therapist, Sam was able to accept that while he himself would never be an alpha male, he could choose to switch his allegiance from an abusive alpha to one more deserving. Like, say; the guy who got him clean, dry pants rather than the asshole who tormented him. Sam's slavish devotion would have seemed a little weird and out of the blue to anyone but Logan. Weird and out of the blue were right in Logan's wheelhouse.

He and Wallace had always liked Sam and they'd been dismayed when he got caught in a cheating scandal. Having been a prisoner living under adverse conditions (not just during the sociology experiment) Logan had had some empathy for what Sam had undergone. Having also been caught cheating, Wallace too, could empathize. Both Wallace and Logan had realized that there but for the grace of God…

They were both glad that Sam had managed to land on his feet and had stayed in touch throughout the years.

When Sam had gotten an entry position with his father's accounting firm, Logan hadn't hesitated to pull his fortune from Avi Kaufman's greedy clutches and placed it safely in the hands of a young man whose lack of experience was more than compensated by his complete devotion to Logan's best interests.

Landing an account the size of Logan Echolls' fortune had instantly made Sam a rising star in his Dad's firm. Sam was content to let his one huge account, plus the fact of being the boss's son give him clout at work. He'd never had clout before and he found that he liked it. That, as much as the fact that he would take a bullet for Logan on a personal level, urged Sam to take particular care with his client's portfolio.

"You're going to be getting a package from Becker & Associates." Logan told him.

"Yeah, a big box just arrived. What is it?" Sam pulled the invoice off the top of the delivery and unfolded it.

"I don't know. I need that overnighted to me at home."

"You don't know?" Sam demanded, gaping at the bottom line. "This invoice is _huge!"_

"Does it say what it's for?"

"You're asking me? I get an invoice for $35,000.00 and you don't know what it's for?" Sam demanded. "I'm not going to pay this. What the hell are you doing?"

"Relax, Sam. Just send me the box. I'll let you know if I decide to keep anything in it."

"Who the hell is Becker and Associates?"

"A name you should probably get used to." Logan laughed. "I'd let you take a peek but I don't want you touching any of it. What's the invoice say?"

"Uh…" Sam usually read invoices from the bottom line up. He read off the items. "One Oscar de la Renta…one Donna Karan…one Naeem Khan and one Monique Llu…Lliu…I don't know. Who are these motherfuckers?"

"You've never heard of Oscar de la Renta?"

"Yeah." Sam blustered. "Of course. So? Who the hell is she?"

"Am I out of money, Sam?"

"No, but what the hell? This almost half your monthly stipend."

"It's only a little over a third," Logan corrected him. "I can do simple math."

"I'm naturally conservative; I tend to round up." Sam retorted. "That's a good thing in an accountant. What kind of a job would I be doing if I just signed off on everything that comes through here without checking to see that you actually ordered it? I've never heard of Becker &Assoc., I don't know what this is."

"They're dresses. I'm sick of Veronica wearing rags. Don't worry, we probably won't buy all of them. Just get them to me by tomorrow, okay?"

"Oh, they're for _Veronica." _Sam relaxed. That one word answered everything.

"You should Google those items, Sam." Logan suggested. "Tell me Veronica's not worth every penny."

"I'm not about to spend my afternoon imagining your wife in various outfits." Sam said, haughtily. "Not that she's not lovely but she's _your wife_."

"Good point. Imagine your own girl in them."

"Is that an order?" Sam grinned. He could think of worse ways to spend the afternoon.

"Just get me that box by tomorrow."

to be continued...


	32. Chapter 32 Veronicanomics

Chapter 32 Veronicanomics

"Hey, Stud…" Marla, seeing the name on her caller ID, answered in a sultry voice but she was unable to stop herself from breaking into giggles.

"I'm not sure what I find more disconcerting; the way you answer your phone or the fact that the idea of me as a stud makes you laugh." Keith said, toeing off his shoes as he settled into his recliner.

"That you make me laugh is one of my favorite things about you." Marla tucked her feet under herself in her overstuffed arm chair. "Don't worry; I only answer like that when your name pops up. You're late; I was getting worried."

"Why?" Keith twisted off the top of his beer. "It's only 5:40."

"It's 5:40 _there_," she pointed out, gazing at the shadows slanting across her living room floor as the sun set over downtown Minneapolis. "Here, its 7:40 and you usually call by quarter after. I was beginning to think you'd forgotten all about me." She pouted, trying to sound like a petulant Diva.

"Really? You weren't worried that I'd met with foul play and was lying in a hospital or a ditch somewhere?" Keith teased.

"No, it was pretty much all about me." The Diva disappeared in a flash of dismay as she sat up straighter in her arm chair, asking "Is that likely? Do I really have to worry about you being hurt from now on when you don't call on time?"

"Only if I'm not very good at my job," Keith pointed out with a chuckle. "I hardly ever find myself in dangerous situations; I leave those to Eli."

"Your assistant?"

"My much younger, tougher, scarier looking assistant."

"Thank goodness." She relaxed back into her chair with a smile. "So, can it go back to being all about me, now?"

"It was always all about you." Keith assured her, taking a drink of his beer. "I'm sorry about the lateness. This client is extremely demanding. I'm not even sure I can deliver what is being asked of me."

"And more than that you can't tell me," Marla answered in the voice of one who had already asked and been rebuffed. "_I know_."

"Not without betraying my oath of confidentiality." Keith said in the sing song tone of long repetition. "So please; let's get back to it being all about you. How can you possibly think I'd forget about you? You have to know our calls are the high light of my day."

"Hey, I'm just a gal with whom you spent a total of maybe ten hours." Marla said dryly, brushing a cracker crumb off the shapeless sweater she'd tossed on when she got home from work. "When I was young and in my prime, I believed my charms were enough to captivate a man from seven states away for weeks on end but now? I'm no longer so full of myself."

"Your charms are plenty captivating." Keith said with a smile. "In fact, I'm afraid far too much of my time is taken up with thinking about you and your charms."

"Pssh." Marla laughed. "You haven't even met my charms yet, Sheriff. I'm saving the heavy artillery for our first actual date."

"I can hardly wait." Keith breathed.

"That sounded _way_ more forward than I meant it!" Marla back pedaled as Keith's laugh boomed across the line. "You won't get the full barrage right away. I'm not that kind of girl! Well, I never used to be, anyway."

"OH. Well, I didn't think…! As it is, I have to concentrate on not letting my mind wander in your direction while I'm working." Keith admitted. "If I'm not careful, I think of you and then I'm useless the rest of the day."

"Flatterer. I don't believe you for a moment." Marla smiled and took a sip of her cabernet. "I think about you all day, too. Elliot thinks its early onset dementia."

"You haven't told Elliot about me?" Keith frowned; bothered by the idea that Marla hadn't mentioned him to her best friend.

"Of course I have! I told _him_ before I told _you_. He thinks you're just an excuse for not going out." She confided. "He says one kiss and hundreds of hours of conversation doesn't constitute a relationship."

"He does, huh?" Sometimes Keith didn't think he liked Elliot.

"_I say_ it's the twenty first century and half the relationships out there are conducted by people who have never been in the same room with each other!"

"God, that's depressing!" Keith winced.

"The twenty first century can be a sad place." Marla nodded. "But not for us."

"I'd love to be in the same room with you but I actually like this phone thing we've got going on." He admitted. "I look forward to pouring myself a cold one, kicking off my shoes and listening to your voice whispering in my ear."

"Me too!" she raised her wine glass as though he could see her and spoke animatedly. "It's hot! Kind of like having a chaperone on all our dates. We can't engage in any hanky panky so we actually have to get to know each other. It's very You've Got Mail."

"It's very what?"

"Or Sleepless in Seattle. Either way, I'm Meg Ryan and you're Tom Hanks."

"You're cuter than Meg Ryan but I've never seen myself as a Tom Hanks type. I like to think I'm more of a Kojak type."

"You've got Telly Sevalas beat on all fronts although I would love to see you work a tootsie pop." She relaxed back into her chair again. "I just meant it's romantic. Sweet."

"Romantic is good." His voice was a whisper in her ear. She let her eyes close before she answered.

"Romantic is _very_ good as long as the long distant aspect isn't tempting you to jump ship and go for a local gal you can actually make out with?" she asked, hoping her light tone of voice masked the truth of her anxiety.

"Nope." Keith casually assured her. He would have been flattered and stunned to know that Marla thought he must be inundated with offers from the beautiful, sex crazed women who famously infested southern California. Since his divorce, he'd had exactly one offer from the three women he'd been with and while he certainly thought they were all beautiful, he'd hesitate to describe any of them as sex crazed. Oblivious, he went on, "I like it that there's no pressure as to where we're gonna go for dinner, can I afford to impress you, how much of a tip should I leave, what if my credit card is refused, did I pay my credit card bill this month…"

"God, I'm a cheap date!" Marla exclaimed with a laugh.

"Are you kidding? My phone bill is astronomical." Keith countered.

"Is that really the kind of stuff you worry about when you take a woman out?"

"My phone bill? Pretty much."

"Your credit card."

"That's all in the past. Now I just sit here in my tightie whities, slamming a beer and scratching myself while we talk."

"Stop. You're turning me on." She moaned. "I know exactly what you mean, though. I like this phone thing, too. I get performance anxiety too, you know."

"I never mentioned _that_!" he objected strongly but she ignored his interruption.

"…this way, I don't have to worry about getting dressed up, whether you've seen my outfit already or how many hours my 18 hour bra has left, if my hair is behaving itself, does my makeup need reapplying…and I don't have to wear heels. I'm saving a fortune on dry cleaning. _And_ we've completely neutralized the horror of finding ourselves in some hip locale, surrounded by wannabes."

"Are they still called 'wannabes'?"

"I believe the word now is 'hipster'. Whatever; they give me hives."

"Did you really just mention your bra to me?"

"You started it with all that hot talk of tightie whities." Marla chuckled. "Are you sure a long distance thing won't be too lonely?"

"Hey, I wasn't looking for a 'thing' at all. Sometimes the best things are the ones that just happen." Keith said. "As for lonely; talking to you has made me feel better than I have since Veronica moved out."

"That must be really hard." Marla knew that Veronica had lived with Keith until she married Logan. "Your only child, growing up, leaving home, _joining the FBI,_ for heaven's sake! That's gotta be tough on a Dad!" Over the weeks, Marla had come to know a lot of what the last few years had been like for the Sheriff and his daughter and she was greatly impressed by the depth of their relationship. Every word Keith said reinforced the closeness and joy they took in each other's company that she'd witnessed at the zoo.

"Yeah, it's been tough." Keith admitted. "As a parent, you know they're going to grow up and become independent and you want them to but it's still a shock to the system when it happens."

"And on top of everything else, she got married. How many hits can a guy take at once?"

"You know," Keith said, as though it still surprised him. "That was actually the easiest part of this whole transition."

"Really? Don't get me wrong; I think Logan's a doll and it's obvious that they're crazy about each other and as a woman, I totally see your daughter's point but…" Marla hesitated, hoping Keith wouldn't take what she was about to say the wrong way, "…he's kind of a Dad's worst nightmare, isn't he?" Much to her relief, Keith burst out laughing, so she went on, "I don't have any kids but I'd think he's the sort of young man you'd rather chase off with a shotgun than see marry your only child!"

"Yes!" he admitted when he finally caught his breath. "He was, absolutely! And I did, believe me! When she first started seeing him, she didn't even tell me."

"Smart girl. I sure wouldn't have told my Dad."

"She's so smart she dumped him, I don't know…two or three…a bunch of times. He kept coming back, though. Got to give the kid props for persistence."

"So…how did he win you over? Is it just because he makes Veronica so happy?"

"No, that's how he won her over. For me it was…" Keith stopped to gather his thoughts. "Every man hopes his daughter finds someone who puts her first; is more concerned with her welfare than his own…we'd all like to believe that the men our daughters choose would take a bullet for them. In Logan's case, it's not just hope; I happen to know that's a fact."

There was silence on the line as Marla contemplated his words. "You've actually taken a shot at him, haven't you Sheriff?"

"Who me? NO, _I_ never shot at him." Keith laughed again. "I wanted to. Plenty of times! I did throw him out, once."

"So he _was_ a hellion growing up?" Marla nodded, her suspicion validated.

"You said it; a Dad's worst nightmare. But you know, a lot of people would say Veronica was, too. I seem to remember a conversation about putting her in a large hamster ball."

"Fathers of teenage girls would love that idea. Patent it and you could make a fortune." Marla mused. "Somehow, I don't think it would have kept Logan away."

"It wouldn't have." Keith acknowledged. "If Veronica herself couldn't keep him away, no power on Heaven or Earth would've done the trick. She wouldn't have taken him, otherwise."

"It helps that he thinks your daughter hung the moon. He's actually a very sweet kid."

"Don't kid yourself!" Keith scoffed. "He's the most arrogant, snotty little bastard I've ever known and I couldn't be prouder or more fond of him if he were my own son."

"Well, he kind of is now, isn't he? I think he feels the same way about you." She assured him.

"As long as he's got Veronica's back he can feel whatever he wants about me." Keith sighed. "I miss them."

"I can tell. I just wish…doesn't all that make this long distance thing even worse?"

"Marla." Keith infused the word with indulgence. "Who am I going to meet out here who will tolerate me going on for hours about my kids?"

"When do you think you'll visit them again?"

"Well, I was planning on coming for Christmas but I suppose Thanksgiving would work…"

"Halloween is wonderful in the Twin Cities, you know." She suggested, hopefully.

"I've heard that!"

"You'd make a terrific vampire."

"You'd make a terrific slutty nurse!"

"I _do_ make a terrific slutty nurse." She admitted.

"I've heard Columbus Day is kind of a big deal there, too."

"It could be. It _should_ be."

"You know, Elliot wasn't completely wrong about this relationship." Keith said, thoughtfully.

"What do you mean?"

"One kiss isn't going to be enough."

"Oh, it's not going to be even close to enough."

* * *

Sam's system filled with adrenaline when his secretary informed him that for the second time in two days, Mr. Echolls was on the line.

"Hey, Champ! What can I do for you?" He chirped as he hit the speaker button. A heavy silence filled the office. Sam felt the flush of embarrassment rise in his cheeks as sharply as he felt Logan's glare of disapproval over the phone line.

"…besides not calling you 'champ' ever again?" Sam continued, lamely. "Never, ever, as long as I live?"

His therapist had explained to him that his compulsive nick-naming was an attempt to ingratiate himself with those whom he considered his superiors. Not only did such obsequious behavior fail to establish him as a social equal, it made him look like a suck up. At the meeting in which Logan had hired Sam as his primary accountant; Sam had called him 'Sport'. Logan had glared at him for an uncomfortably long moment, then said "I prefer to be called by my name, if you don't mind."

"That would be 'Admiral Moneybags'." Logan's ever present lackey had interjected.

"Or that." Logan had nodded without so much as a glance at the skinny young man standing behind his chair.

Sam had glanced at Jeff Ratner and wondered how it was that the snarky bell boy was so clearly uncowed by his rich, glamorous employer, while Sam, who theoretically was much closer to Logan's social standing, was so completely intimidated.

By both of them.

He'd scheduled an emergency appointment with his therapist the moment they left his office. That had been nearly two years ago. He was trying to stop the abasing behavior but old habits die hard. His therapist was right; Sam felt much more comfortable with Logan Echolls when he didn't attempt to portray himself as a buddy. It was one of life's little paradoxes; to get what you want, behave as though the opposite were true. Sam never felt more comfortable with Logan than when they were discussing economics.

"How much do I have invested in precious stones and metals?" Logan asked cheerfully, letting 'Champ' disappear down the memory hole.

"Roughly ten." Sam said, relieved to be back on familiar territory.

"Ten thousand?"

"Please." Sam rolled his eyes.

"Million?" Logan prompted.

"Percent." Sam clarified. "Even now, the rule of thumb is no more than ten percent in precious commodities."

"I want to invest another hundred grand. Would that mess up the balance?"

"No." Sam chuckled at the idea that such a drop in the bucket could mess up his carefully calculated dispersal of Logan's fortune. "You're still good. What do you want to put it in? Gold? Silver is on the rise at the moment…"

"Platinum, sapphires, diamonds."

"That's pretty specific." Sam said suspiciously.

"I'm buying a ring from Tiffany's. Ronnie never let me give her a decent engagement ring but I found a cocktail ring I think she'll like."

"Hang on a sec…" Sam pulled up the Tiffany's website and quickly found the page describing the ring Logan wanted. "The Legacy?" Sam was looking at a beautiful, square cut sapphire surrounded by tiny diamonds.

"No. The Schlumberger design." The one Logan liked had less diamonds but more sapphire. A lot more.

"Oh. Wow. That's nice. Oh holy balls, Echolls! That's a seven carat sapphire!"

"Cool, huh?"

"With another…nearly two carats in gems around it!" Sam whistled. "It's a bit more than a hundred G's."

"But it's a valid investment, right?" Logan pressed.

"Sure. Investing in finished jewelry is a lot more fun than buying the raw minerals. In fact, why don't I just liquidate some of your current investment account, acquire the ring and make the whole thing a wash? That way is much better for tax purposes." Sam sat back in his chair. "You in trouble? You sure seem to be showering Veronica with gifts."

"Showering her with gifts is my prime directive. We have an event coming up, remember? It's just taking her a little longer to get comfortable with her new financial situation. I'm trying to spur the process along."

"Oh, is this for that art thing?" The catalogue from JoAnne McKnight had come through Sam's office, as all of Logan Echolls' business dealings did. "Are you serious about collecting?"

"As serious as I ever am." Logan said, lightly. "Who knows? I may discover a new Rembrandt in need of a patron."

"Have you ever looked at a Rembrandt?" Sam grimaced. "His landscapes are cool but his portraits? Bleh. Either he hated everyone who ever sat for him or he only knew ugly people."

"Now you're an art expert?"

"I took an art appreciation class by accident, once. Historically, art has been a fairly decent investment but I don't know…in these troubled times? Seems pretty risky."

"I'm not interested in art as an investment." Logan shook his head, thinking of all the 'important' canvases his parents had hung in their home. Once, angry at his Mom, he had squirted a half a bottle of mustard all over a canvas in the dining room. No one ever noticed. As far as he knew, it had gone up in flames still covered in mustard.

"Good. If the global economy takes another hit, you're far better off putting your money in gold and food commodities than in something as esoteric as art. No one can eat art."

"Apparently you've never heard of the seed art exhibit at the Minnesota State Fair."

"What?"

"Never mind. Don't worry. I'm not about to move some dirty, smelly, starving sculptor into my attic."

"I'd love to see Veronica's reaction if you tried!" Sam guffawed.

"She would be pissed." Logan grinned, remembering the fun they'd had when he'd moved JR into the garage. He felt no need to tell Sam about any of that.

"And I suppose you'd have to 'invest' in another piece of jewelry." Sam said, archly.

"You'd suppose wrong. Ronnie and I do not have a relationship based on threats or bribery. Sometimes I wish we did; I'd have had an easier time if I could have simply bought her affections."

"If she were that type of girl, you'd have dumped her years ago."

"You're pretty wise for a hobbit, Horshack." Logan told him. "Now, get me that ring."

"One ring to rule them all." Sam answered, flattered at being called a hobbit.

* * *

"So, did you go to the Mall?" Tuski asked Veronica as they sat on a bench overlooking the Mississippi river while eating the lunch they'd picked up at Bruegger's.

"We did." Veronica nodded, peeling the paper off her bagel sandwich. "And while the mall lived up to the hype, I am still without a dress."

"Why? No one had size tiny and a half?" Tuski snickered as she popped a bite of her bagel into her mouth.

"Logan didn't like any of the dresses I could afford. Do you have any idea how much a decent evening gown costs?" Veronica shook her head. "It's crazy."

"I don't know." Tuski shrugged. "Define 'decent'. I guess it's like everything else; you can spend as much as you want. I know places to go for a great looking dress for under a hundred bucks."

"Me too, but it won't do to show up at an upper crusty event sporting a knock off." Veronica explained. "That's the very argument I used with Larson to get the bureau card out of him but it turns out I undersold the situation by quite a bit." She sighed and shook her head. "I only have this assignment because I said I could blend into this crowd. Logan's right; I can't blow my cover the second I walk in the door."

"He said that, did he?" Tuski cut her eyes at Veronica. "How perceptive of him."

"Yeah, he…knows about stuff like that." Veronica admitted with a shrug as she studied her bagel.

"Huh." Tuski waited a beat but her companion offered up no more information on her incognito spouse. "So, what are you going to do about it? Tell Larson you need more wardrobe cash?"

"Lord no!" Veronica shuddered, recalling her last conversation with the Section Chief. "Logan offered to buy me a dress we both like."

"Perfect! Situation salvaged." Tuski took a gulp of her drink.

"I feel weird about it." Veronica muttered, picking at her everything bagel.

"Why? Men buy their wives nice shit all the time." Tuski said. "What's wrong with letting your man buy you a nice dress?"

"Nothing." Veronica chuffed a laugh. "I just feel weird letting him foot the bill for what is, essentially, a work assignment."

"So? Lots of people's social lives revolve around work. Just think of it as a…reward ceremony or stock holders banquet or something like that." Tuski leaned down and peeled off her plain black pumps.

"This is different." Veronica shook her head. "Those events, whether in conjunction with work or not, are social occasions. One is not actually working while attending."

"Are you kidding?" Tuski scoffed, flexing her feet and rubbing them across the grass. "You've never met a salesman, have you? They're always working, whether they're at a cocktail party, on the golf course or at the beach. Haven't you ever heard of the legendary three martini lunch? All work events."

"Hmmm…" Veronica sounded uncharacteristically uncertain.

"Are you gonna sit there and pretend that in your years as a P.I. you never attended a social event under cover?" Tuski lifted an eyebrow, skeptically. "Cause I _know_ that's a lie."

"Of course! I just never asked Logan to foot the bill for my disguise. And the bill was never _so frickin' high_."

"So, welcome to the big leagues!" Tuski shrugged.

"Oh, now you're quoting Blythe." Veronica groaned.

"She can't be wrong _all _the time."

"Am I just being stupid, thinking that I can do this job without taking advantage of personal resources?" Veronica asked.

"Yes." Tuski didn't hesitate. "Not just stupid but naïve. We use every resource legally at our disposal, Mars. That includes our gender, our looks and every preconception society has about said items. Say we needed to infiltrate a gay strip club; you think Shep would balk at taking off his shirt and dancing for a case? No way."

"God, I hope that happens." Veronica grinned.

"We should be so lucky." Tuski laughed, trying not to choke on her bagel.

"You're right, of course." Veronica sat up straight on the bench. "I've _never_ hesitated to use anything and anyone I can get my hands on. You can't do this job without a certain amount of ruthlessness. I accept that! I don't know what's bugging me now."

"Maybe you just never expected it to be Logan you'd have to use." Tuski suggested, sympathetically.

The two women ate their lunch in silence for a few moments, staring out at the magnificent view of the Mississippi. The sky was pure blue, reflected off the water before them and the trees on the bluffs were just beginning to show a hint of autumn color.

"You know what I think?" Veronica finally said. "I think that deep down, I'm pissed that my very first assignment was only offered to me because of Logan. I thought I was angry because they wanted to use him and I _was_ but maybe…no, _definitely_ some of that anger was because they overlooked _me_ as an asset." She shook her head. "I have to get over myself."

"That doesn't even make any sense." Tuski feigned ignorance. "They offered you the case because of _Logan_? Why would they do that? What are you talking about?"

"Oh." Veronica looked at her companion, sheepishly. "Um…Larson figured since I'd married someone with money I'd fit in at this auction."

"Because you married a guy with an internet start up?" Tuski continued to play dumb. "That's a hell of a leap."

"Oh." Veronica sighed, "Logan actually came from money. The internet thing doesn't make all that much. Plus, his Mom was a known collector."

"Oh! Why does Larson know any of this?" Tuski zeroed in. "They do background checks on who we marry?"

"They do background checks on _us."_ Veronica shrugged, instinctively slithering out of the corner Tuski had tried to back her into. "I guess who we marry is all part of it."

"Well, what difference does it make why they gave you this assignment?" Tuski backed off. "Whether they needed someone who can afford a great dress or just a hot blond, what they got is an ace investigator. Crack the case and shove it up their ass."

Veronica laughed so hard she almost choked on the last bite of her bagel sandwich. When she caught her breath, she looked at Tuski and said "I'm going to have t-shirts made that say that!"

"I know where you can have it needle pointed on a pillow." Tuski grinned. "And stuff your silly scruples regarding a dress. If you didn't have the case, would you be attending this shindig?"

"Actually, yes!" Veronica admitted. "Logan already wanted to go."

"And wouldn't you let him buy you a nice dress for the occasion?"

"Of course." Veronica nodded.

"Then Mars, you don't have a problem." Tuski pointed out. "_I_ have a problem."

"You do?" Veronica finished her drink and crumpled up the bag her lunch had been in.

"Yah!" Tuski pushed her feet back into her pumps. "If they know all about your husband, it's only a matter of time before Blythe finds out about me and Shep."

"Uh oh." Veronica giggled. "I want to be there when she finds out and her head explodes."

"She'll definitely accuse me of sleeping my way to the top."

"If that's what you're doing, your aim is really bad." Veronica laughed.

"Well, I could just be sleeping my way to lower level field work." Tuski laughed too. "And maybe with a little luck, someday I'll marry for the sake of a double digit salary!"

"And your husband will be able to buy you a fine, synthetic party dress?"

"And then, please, please, _please,"_ Tuski crossed her fingers, "he'll take me to the Uptown Art Fair in style!"

"Oh, the dream within a dream!" Veronica swooned. "We'll be known as Special Agents Slut and Gold Digger."

"Those are _awesome_ code names!" Tuski said. "But let's simplify it to Special Agents Sleazy and Greedy." She cut her eyes to Veronica. "You don't really care what people say about you behind your back, do you, Mars?"

"Nah. I haven't been able to afford that luxury since I was fifteen. I don't even care what they say to my face but it infuriates me that anyone thinks that Logan married a mercenary. He doesn't deserve that."

"You think there's been a day in that boy's life when he gave a shit what anyone said about him?" Tuski asked, incredulously.

"He doesn't care what anyone says about _him_," Veronica acknowledged, remembering all the fights Logan got into because of comments made about Lilly or Lynn or herself.

"It was obvious to us from the moment we saw your house that you have money but it was equally obvious from the moment we saw you two together that money had nothing to do with why you got married. Hell, the first time you ever mentioned him to me, your eyes got all swirly…"

"They did not!" Veronica said, unconvincingly indignant.

"… and I saw stars and cartoon birds fluttering around your head. Oh, look! See? There they are." Tuski pointed over Veronica's head with a laugh. "People _will_ be jealous of you for marrying money but they'd _really_ hate you if they knew the truth."

* * *

Veronica had made peace with the situation by the time she got home that afternoon. Having identified the true cause of her unease, she'd decided it was irrational and unworthy of her and so put it out of her mind. She walked into the kitchen, tossed her bag on the island and went to find Logan. The living room was empty so she walked through to the library, gazing happily at her view of the lake as she drifted through the house. She still could barely believe that all of this was theirs.

The kitchen had floor to ceiling windows on both the east and west exposures so it was filled with sunshine all day long. The living room, with its panoramic view of the lake, had no western exposure so it seemed cool and hazy in the late afternoon. Large squares of sunshine hit the floor where it came through the French doors of the sunroom and library. The library had large, square windows looking out into the back yard and was flooded with light, which was blinding after the relative dimness of the living room. Veronica blinked as she looked around Logan's office but it was as empty as the living room.

"Logan?" she called as she returned to the front of the house. "Are you home?"

"What if I answered 'No'?" he asked as he came down the stairs.

"I would be sad." She exclaimed as she threw her arms around him. He returned her embrace and dipped his head to kiss her upturned face. "After much soul searching and self examination, I realized that I am ready to let you buy me a ridiculously expensive dress. It's only money, right? And you've got more than you'll ever need, right?"

"_We've_ got more than _we'll _ever need." He corrected her while rocking them back and forth.

"So…" she went on, ignoring his interruption, "why not support the local economy and the fashion industry at large by throwing a relatively insignificant amount away on something that will make me feel like a fairy princess while I weasel my way into the confidence of some Daddy Warbucks type who may or may not be using art as a cover for his nefarious plots?"

"You are the only girl I've ever known who has to come to a philosophical position just go shopping." He smiled down at her.

"Well, I also remembered that I saved you three grand by having the Bureau pick up the tab on the tickets, so there's that."

"You're actually saving us money!" He was impressed. "Now I can quit suffering and write that symphony!"

"Plus, this way; we get to keep the dress, so let's find something we both really love."

"Okay!" he picked her up off her feet and swung her up onto the first step. "Upstairs."

"That's not what I meant." She said, leering at him. "But okay!"

"Cool your jets, hot stuff. I've got a present for you up there." He nodded towards the upper floor.

"I know; it's my favorite thing!" she turned to run up the stairs.

"No, I mean something that came in a box." He tried to explain as he followed her up the stairs.

"You better not come in your b-" she turned and glared at him.

"It came in the mail!" he cut her off, exasperated. They were half way up the staircase. Veronica, on the landing two steps above him, was eye to eye with him.

"Male is my favorite flavor." She said in a low voice, batting her eyes. Then she turned and ran the rest of the way up the stairs with Logan hot on her heels.

* * *

Quite a while later, Logan lifted his head off the pillow and smiled at his tousled wife. "Hey, wake up."

"Shhh…" she shook her head and tried to burrow into his side.

"I want give you your present." He smoothed her hair off of her face.

"I can't handle another present just yet." She mumbled, rolling onto her back without opening her eyes. "I'm still enjoying the immediate past."

"C'mon," he pressed. "I want to see what fits."

"The whole thing fits. Now be quiet; you're ruining the afterglow."

"I can't believe I'm actually gonna say this," he sighed, "but would you please get your mind off my manly attributes? I've been waiting all afternoon to see your reaction to what I had delivered. I meant to show you the minute you got home but you distracted me with your feminine wiles," he dropped a kiss between her breasts, "for which I am wildly grateful. But it's time to hop in the shower. So get up or I'll haul your wily femme butt into the bathroom myself."

"Since when have you been Mr. Shower-immediately-after-sex?" her eyes popped open so she could glare at him more effectively.

"I have always been a proponent of basic hygiene." He protested. "And as for 'immediately after', you've been asleep for an hour. This hasn't got anything to do with our recent activities; unless we're going to keep all four, I'd rather you didn't get the remains of the day all over them."

"Okay, I give." She sighed. "What are you babbling on about?"

"You'll see." He teased. "Soon as you get out of the shower all clean and sweet smelling…"

"I kinda like the way I smell right now." She languidly stretched her whole body.

"You have the most wildly feminine wiles I've ever seen," He watched her appreciatively. "I guess your present could wait awhile…"

"NO. No. I'm up." She wriggled out of his reach and sat up. "I'll take a shower. Man, you're getting kinky in your old age."

"You have no idea." He leaned his chin on his hand as he watched her go.

"You sure you don't want to haul my femme butt in there yourself?" she asked, peeking at him over her shoulder as she sashayed toward the bathroom.

"Not unless I want to render the shower moot." He grinned. "I'll be here when you get out."

* * *

Veronica came out of the bathroom wrapped in the silk kimono she'd gotten in Hawaii on their honeymoon. She was clean, shiny and toweling her hair.

"Okay, so what's the big surpri-Oooh!" she dropped the towel on the floor forgotten, as she caught sight of the exquisite gowns Logan had spread out on the freshly made bed. "Ohh…_look _at these!" she breathed.

Logan watched as Veronica approached the gowns. Ms. Becker had done a splendid job when she chose them; two were long, two short, two were black, one was embroidered, one was beaded and all four had necklines to showcase the antique garnet set Veronica was dying to wear. Any of the four gowns would make her the best dressed woman at the auction. The look on her face as she gazed at them, her hands hovering over the bed, as though she were afraid to actually touch them, was worth all the time and trouble he'd put into finding them.

"Try 'em on; let's see how they look." He urged, bouncing onto the other side of the huge bed.

"I think I need to take another shower first!" Veronica gasped. "Or…or _something_!" She looked at him. "These are so beautiful." She reached out and ran one finger along the silver silk embroidery covering one of the shorter dresses. "Ohh. It's so soft." She cooed as she lifted the dress off the bed and carefully carried it over to the closet they were still using as a dressing room. She smiled at him as she went in and slid the door shut behind her.

For the next forty minutes, she put on a fashion show for Logan. The first dress was black linen, covered with silver embroidery. It had a sweetheart neckline, strappy sleeves and skimmed her figure, hitting a few inches above her knee. It looked like it was painted onto her but was cut so well that she didn't feel constricted at all, even when she tried sitting in it.

Logan loved it.

The second gown was a floor length, strapless, deep red and black chiffon which draped asymmetrically from a form fitting bodice. Veronica loved the dress but felt that it was too much red with the garnets. She swished and swirled in front of the full length the mirror for quite some time, watching the way the colors shimmered into each other.

Logan loved it.

"You look like Pele, the goddess of fire." He said, watching her.

"It's wonderful," she agreed. "But I'd have to wear a simple diamond pendant with it or no jewels at all. Definitely not garnets; I'd look like I was in costume as the Red Queen or something."

"Something like Pele, the goddess of fire?"

"YES." She spun in front of him, causing the panels of the skirt to swirl out around her. "Oh, it's so _soft_! Feel that!" she stopped twirling in front of him and invited him to stroke the silk.

"Yeeaaaahh…" he ran his hands up her waist and down to her rear. "That's really nice…so's the dress."

"My lord, that's a dress." She looked into the mirror one last time then went to take the dress off.

The third was a deceptively simple floor length, black cashmere. It was sleeveless with a scoop neck and was cut so that the gown hugged her until just below her hips, where the dress flared out to reach the floor in swirls of fabric. Asymmetrical bands of beads in red, black and silver chased each other the length of the dress. It was understated, beautiful and glittery.

Logan loved it.

The last dress was a blush pink silk. Sleeveless, with a deep v-neck, what made the dress amazing was the skirt. From her waist to just above her knees, the dress was a blush pink riot of ostrich feathers. From the moment she zipped it up; Veronica knew she had found her dress. She stared at herself in the dressing room mirror for a long moment before she walked out into the bedroom for Logan to see.

The look on his face when she opened the dressing room door confirmed it; she didn't give a flying farquar what this dress might cost; she was keeping it.

"_Holy shit."_ Logan finally said when he stopped gaping like a fish.

"Yeah." She nodded. They stared stupidly at each other for a long moment before Veronica spun around and dashed back into the walk in closet. "I need to see it with the garnets!"

She threw open her jewel case and brought out the ear rings, fixing them into her lobes, then brought the necklace out so Logan could clasp it around her throat. Then she stepped back and looked at the effect in the mirror.

It was perfect.

The blood red stones were at the deep red end of the spectrum from the pale blush of the dress but they balanced each other out as though they had been made for each other.

Veronica started jumping up and down in front of the mirror she was so excited.

"Oh, my God, I love it, I love it Iloveit!" she squealed. She caught sight of her laughing husband in the mirror. "What are you going to wear?"

"Oh, I don't know. I was kinda thinking shorts and a golf shirt?" he shrugged.

"No you don't! You're going to be my date, you're going to look as good as I do!"

"I don't think pink ostrich feathers are my thing." He laughed. "But I didn't think they were yours, either. They suit you."

"Speaking of suit, you've got to get one that goes with my dress." She ordered. "We can't clash, not at the Art Institute!"

"You don't think a golf shirt would be avant garde?"

"Oh, hell! Wear whatever you want, no one's even going to notice you." She waved her hand at him in dismissal as she danced around.

"Are you throwing down the gauntlet?" Logan caught her in his arms. "Cause I think I hear a challenge to my sartorial excellence!"

"You may be first rate eye candy, Sugar Pants but _come on_." She struck a pose in front of him.

"We'll see about that." He growled. Then they came perilously close to damaging the gorgeous dress.

* * *

A few days later, Bryn took Veronica to all her favorite places to look for shoes. Their first stop was the Burlington Coat Factory.

"Oh, I love that place." Veronica said as they headed off in Bryn's car. "There was one near La Jolla that we used to hit when we were down in San Diego. I wish we'd had one in Neptune."

"It's hard to imagine Adm-Logan shopping at Burly." Bryn commented.

"Not Logan; me and Wallace." Veronica clarified. "He was here for my birthday?"

"Oh, yeah." Bryn thought for a moment. "He's the one going to…SDSU?"

"That's my Wallace. After a stellar career as the point guard at Hearst, he got a full ride as the grad assistant with the basketball program there. He's getting his master's degree in mechanical engineering. I guess they've got a pretty good team."

"Is that where you met him?" Bryn asked as she turned on the cd player.

"No, he was in high school with us. Wallace and I met at the flagpole in the front quad early one morning before first bell." Veronica sighed, melodramatically. "I'll never forget it!"

"Did you guys date?"

"It was so romantic; our first day of junior year; the quad dappled with morning sunshine and there was the new kid; duct taped naked to the flag pole."

"Duct taped?" Bryn looked at her, aghast.

"Yep." Veronica chuckled.

"Naked? To the flag pole?"

"In the middle of the quad, to be sure everyone witnessed his humiliation. The first thing Wallace had done upon moving to town was piss off the local motorcycle gang. So of course, we became best friends."

"That was some town you grew up in." Bryn frowned.

"You have no idea."

"So, is that how Wallace and Logan became friends?" Bryn asked. "Through you?"

"I don't really know how that happened." Veronica admitted, still puzzled after all these years. "Wallace helped me frame Logan for possession of paraphernalia and was with me when Logan retaliated by bashing in the headlights of my car, which he now claims he only did to get my attention. At the time, I was sure he would have totaled my car if the aforementioned motorcycle gang hadn't arrived and saved the day by beating the crap out of him. Next thing I knew, they were buddies. Logan and Wallace, I mean. It was a few more years before Logan and Weevil buried the hatchet but they did, eventually. I don't understand boys."

"Guys are weird," Bryn, who had brothers, offered. "They can hate each other before a fist fight and be good friends after."

"Not always…" Veronica shook her head, thinking of Gory, when Piz flashed across her mind. "But I know what you mean." She frowned. "It could have been something like that. All I know is Wallace was my friend and one day, out of the blue, he was advocating for Logan. I never found out why."

Bryn made the turn from highway 7 to highway 100 as Veronica lapsed into silence, her thoughts drifting back to those turbulent days. The voice from the cd player penetrated her day dream;

"_He can't feel the smile I'm faking  
And my heart's not breaking  
'Cuz I'm not feeling anything at all.  
__You were wild and crazy,  
just so frustrating;  
intoxicating,  
got away by some mistake and now…  
I miss screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain.  
It's 2 a.m. and I'm cursing your name.  
I'm so in love that I acted insane  
__and that's the way I loved you.  
Breaking down and coming undone,  
it's a roller coaster kind of rush  
and I never knew I could feel that much  
and that's the way I loved you… "_

"What are we listening to?" She demanded, sitting up straight.

"Uh…the cd is called Fearless." Bryn glanced at her as she merged onto highway one hundred. "It's Taylor Swift."

"Of course it is." Veronica mumbled, leaning back in her seat and closing her eyes.

* * *

Logan had called Sam and told him he was sending some of the dresses back. He instructed his accountant to get them back to Becker and Associates ASAP, along with a check for the two he kept. As well as the blush pink Oscar De La Renta, Logan had decided to hang on the lava red Monique Lhuillier. He had a hunch it would come in handy eventually. Lilly had been right; Veronica was born to wear red.

"Okay," Sam pulled out the invoice listing the haute couture gowns. He whistled when he saw which dresses Logan was buying. "Nice. You managed to choose the most expensive of the four."

"Don't care."

"Course, the other one's the least expensive...Seventeen grand for two is a lot cheaper than thirty five thousand for all four so I guess I shouldn't complain." Sam said, philosophically.

"You shouldn't." Logan agreed. "Just pay the bill."

"Rest assured; I shall. But I'm going to keep an eye on all this for you, Logan." Sam said. "I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't question, scrutinize and criticize. You understand, right?"

"As long as you don't expect me to listen to a word you say, that's what I pay you for."

"Uh, right!" Sam said, confused.

* * *

"Check these out!" Veronica showed Logan the shoes she'd bought; a pair of nude patent leather pumps with a two inch platform and a four inch heel. "Aren't they perfect?"

Logan whistled as she modeled them for him, twirling so he could appreciate them from every angle.

"They retail for $120.00. Guess what I paid for them!" She challenged.

"$110.00?"

"Forty! I got these for $39.99!" she bragged.

"Nice." Logan said, suitably impressed.

"I finally put a dent in the Bureau credit card," she said, admiring her new shoes. "I don't know what to do about the other $460.00. I could just leave it but you know how the government operates; if all I spend is $40, the next agent who needs to expense a wardrobe will only get $40.00."

"We'll think of something." Logan assured her. "I'm thinking of something right now."

"Oh yeah, what?" she looked up at him.

"I think I need to see the shoes without the distraction of all those other clothes..."

* * *

Veronica walked in to O'Gara's after work on Friday. She found her friends sitting at a table out on the walk. Here in the metro area, even establishments that had no outdoor areas simply roped off a part of the sidewalk and set tables out under umbrellas. No one in Minnesota wanted to be inside for a single unnecessary moment when the weather was nice.

"Mars! So good of you to join us." Tuski smiled. "Shep's buying!"

"What?" Shep looked at her. "I am?"

"Yeah, you are. You lost our bet." Tuski reminded him.

"What bet?" Morris asked. "Not that I care; as long as someone else is buying, I approve!"

"I didn't lose; you did." Shep said, staring at Tuski in disbelief.

"No way!" Tuski insisted. "You guessed 'quiet little computer geek'."

"Oh my God." Veronica looked at the pair of them.

"You said 'big dumb teddy bear!" Shep reminded her.

"Do you have any idea what they're talking about?" Morris leaned toward Veronica, who shook her head, innocently.

"You said 'uber nerd'." Tuski threw down.

"You said 'let's his wife do all the talking'." Shep countered. "I can't believe you think you were closer to the mark than I was!"

"You said he was probably a virgin when he met Veronica!" Tuski parried. All three of them turned to Veronica, who had a deer in the headlights look on her face.

"Um…" Veronica's scintillating wit came to her rescue. She had nothing.

"Out with it, Mars; was your Logan a virgin when you met?" Tuski demanded, sure she had made her case.

"He was _twelve!"_ Veronica said, indignantly.

"HA!" Shep slammed his fist on the table, claiming the point.

"So?" Tuski dismissed his glee and turned back to Veronica. "Answer the question, Agent Mars."

"She did, didn't she?" Morris injected.

"You haven't met him." Tuski answered Morris with a raised eyebrow.

"Oh, _come on!"_ Shep protested. "Asked and answered; you lose."

"Oh, so they met as kids. That doesn't prove your point." Tuski wasn't ready to give in. "Your profile of a physically unprepossessing Trekkie with limited sexual experience was about as far from the bulls eye as it could possibly be."

"_That_ was your profile?" Veronica choked.

"With the possible exception of a big dumb jock who lets his wife boss him around." Shep pointed out the flaws in Tuski's profile.

"Sounds like a draw to me." Veronica shrugged.

"Yeah, I think you both owe us a round." Morris said, firmly.

"You haven't even met him yet!" Shep told Morris. "you don't get a say in this."

"All I know is I'm thirsty," Morris said. "and apparently one of you owes me a beer."

"I have to go with Morris," Veronica said. "You were both pretty far off the mark."

"I guess," Shep was about ready to capitulate but Tuski grinned and went in for the kill.

"'Antonio Banderas'." She said, softly.

"Who?" Morris frowned.

"What?" Veronica asked, looking back and forth between the combatants. Shep glared at Tuski for a long moment, his mouth a firm line, the muscles in his jaw working.

"Fine." He bit the word. "Drinks are on me."

"I can't wait to meet this guy." Morris said, waving over a waitress.

To be Continued...


	33. Chapter 33  Exit Through the Gift Shop

Chapter 32 Exit Through The Gift Shop

September edged toward October and the changing colors of the city began to pick up speed. What had begun as a nearly imperceptible brassiness beneath the green in mid September had bloomed into a magnificent riot of color by the end of the month. Each tree, shrub and hedge seemed to be trying to outdo the rest as they revealed their autumn colors which ranged from bright yellows, rich golds, peach, purple, plum, every orange imaginable from flame to rust and reds that ranged from crimson to blood to fire engine. As the arc of the sun slipped lower on the horizon, the blue of the sky and the water reflecting it became more intense with each passing day. The light filled house on Cedar Lake changed with the colors. At the height of summer, the sun streaming through the windows had been filtered through the leaves of the maples and cottonwoods surrounding the property or bounced off the lake across the street, suffusing the interior with cool greens and blues. As September waned, the sunshine passed through a canopy of leaves that had turned to the warmer end of the spectrum. In the morning, their interior was tinted by the orange and red of the maples on the parkway and by afternoon, the house was filled with sunshine saturated in the yellow and gold of the cottonwoods in the back yard. Logan could almost tell what time it was by the colors bouncing off his walls.

The morning sun coming off the lake was at a distinctly different angle than it had been when they first moved in. Not only was the sun lighting up their bedroom later than it had in July, the shadows cast upon their ceiling had definitely crept north.

The days, although shorter, were still hot and sunny. Humidity was nothing but a distant memory and Logan was far from the only surfer taking advantage of the weather. With the kids all back in school, there were fewer boats on the water so the surfers had the lakes to themselves. There was a surprisingly large community of surfers who were either unemployed or had hours flexible enough to indulge in the sport throughout the day. Logan liked to hit the water in the morning and hole up in his office in the afternoon.

He was fascinated by the changing landscape around him. He had always thought the ocean infinitely changeable but had never seen anything like the kaleidoscope of a Midwestern city in autumn. Naturally, he was aware of the changes the seasons bring; he'd seen plenty of photos and movies set in Vermont, but he'd never lived through it himself. Photographs couldn't do justice to the depth of color that made the trees look like they were lit from within. He'd never seen anything look as alive as the trees on the parkway, pulsing with color. He imagined he could actually taste the color in the air. He spent a lot of his time just staring, awe struck.

Veronica was so busy she barely noticed.

She had put together dossiers on every one of the fifteen artists represented in the catalogue from the Art Institute, along with their significant others, offspring and other family members, business partners and known associates. She looked for anything indicating susceptible behavior; addictions, gambling, promiscuity, etc. She liked to begin an investigation with as much information as possible. She was far more comfortable swamped with info than feeling like even a tiny corner was still in the dark. She also had no problem filing information in the back of her mind once she'd convinced herself it was unimportant. But she almost never forgot a detail. Logan was constantly amazed by the shear amount of information she could hold in her head. He once said her brain was like a data base with no delete function.

While Logan marveled in the changing season, she spent her days immersed in the nearly ninety files she'd already put together. She knew most of it would be discarded as of no interest; at the auction, she'd have a whole new list of people to add to the bureau's 'persons of interest' file. Some might think she was going overboard with her background studies but Veronica had yet to find herself in a situation where too much information was a problem. A born investigator, she had her father's knack for being able to pinpoint pertinent information in a storm of white noise. She never lost sight of the forest for the trees, although Logan worried that she forgot sometimes that there was a world beyond the forest's edge. He admired her tenacity, he always had, but he sometimes wished she'd either come out of the forest or let him crawl beneath the canopy with her. He was turned on by the prospect of getting to watch her work at the art auction. He found that idea much more exciting than any of the art works highlighted in the auction catalogue. The growing predatory look in her eyes was the hottest thing he'd ever seen.

* * *

Several hours before the big event, JR opened the front door to find Candy, trying hard to look professional in his black smock and succeeding only in looking like a pretty mime. His companion had a much more convincing costume; she was short and stocky, Goth from head to toe. Her makeup was heavy and black and what was left of her hair was navy blue. The right side of her head was shaved bald and a tattoo of the Mad Hatter screaming "You're not smart enough to tell me how to live!" covered her pale scalp.

"This is Nat." Candy nodded at her as he brushed past JR. "She's my assistant."

"Shut up, am not." Nat said in the thickest Minnesota accent JR had yet heard. "I'm yer ph'tahgrapher. Yer on yer own fer the rest of it, Candy."

"Like I need your help, you hack." Candy said, unruffled.

"That's 'hack _bitch'_ to you." She shoved Candy playfully. "And doncha ferget it."

"I uh…like your hair." JR said, politely.

"Y'like my hair? Or my tat?" Nat grinned, caressing the ink on her scalp. She pointed at the curtain of navy blue hair falling to the left side of her jaw. "Under the hair on this side it says 'eat the rich'." She gave a noncommittal shrug. "It all depends on what mood I'm in."

"Bullshit." Candy snorted. "It all depends on whose party you're at. You have no integrity or standards, Nat and you know it."

"Do too! My integrity is impregnable! It's jus' my pahlitics that are mutable."

At that point, Logan and Veronica came in from the back yard and Candy introduced them to Nat.

"Omigawd, Candy! You were right, she's the cutest thing _ever_!" Nat exclaimed, looking Veronica up and down so enthusiastically that Veronica instinctively took a step back while Logan raised his eyebrows at Candy.

"_Shut up_." Candy hissed at his friend. "This is Logan, _her husband_."

"What, like he doesn't know how cute she is?" Nat looked disdainfully at Candy.

"Believe me," Logan said, shaking Nat's hand. "I know exactly how cute she is."

"Yah, I betcha think y' do." Nat nodded. "You jus' wait till Candy's through with her! You haven't _seen_ cute yet."

"Oh. My. God. Nat." Candy said, his voice strangled. "Will you just shut. Up?"

"Whatever." Nat rolled her shoulder at him and turned to Veronica. "Let's go, ya li'l pixie."

It was all Logan could do to keep a straight face at the look Veronica threw at him as the other girl dragged his wife up the stairs. Candy started to follow but Logan draped a heavy arm around the slim young man's shoulders.

"I like your friend." He said, ominously.

"Don't worry; she's an excellent photographer." Candy chuckled nervously, his knees buckling slightly under the weight of Logan's arm. "She's helping me start my book. My fashion book, I mean."

"I'm sure she is." Logan's voice was light but his arm felt oppressive and threatening on Candy's shoulders. "Do you and I have to have a talk?"

Candy remembered the stories Piz had told him and he shuddered. "no." he squeaked, trying to sound indignant.

"Good! Now get up there and show us all how cute Ronnie can be!" Logan released him and Candy flew up the stairs.

"You are such a bully." JR said, shaking his head.

"Moi?" Logan asked, feigning shock. "Just polishing the old image, dude. Sometimes the right pose renders action unnecessary."

"Speaking of which, what's the plan tonight?" JR asked. "SOP?"

"What?"

"Operation Asshole, reprise?"

"Of course not." Logan looked at his henchman with the innocent face JR had long ago come to distrust. "I'll be with Veronica tonight. I'm going to be a perfect gentleman." With that announcement, he turned on his heel and sauntered back to his office.

"But…" JR stared after Logan, his face a mask of dismay. "That doesn't work for me!"

"Come on," Logan spun on his heel and smirked at JR, encouragingly. "You're the invisible man, remember?"

* * *

Upstairs, Candy had given Veronica a mani/pedi and while her nails dried, he was studying her hair in the large three way mirror of her vanity.

"Gahd, this is a nice bathroom." Nat looked around appreciatively. "I never been in such a big one! 'cept in a club or somethin' and they're never as nice, y'know? I swear you could have a party in that shower."

"We try to discourage partying in the shower." Veronica said. "The tiles get too slippery for dancing."

"These them heated tiles?" Nat looked critically at the floor. "You know; the ones that are warm all winter?"

"Ah…yes. We do have radiant heating, I believe. We haven't actually had the furnace on yet."

"Will you two be quiet for a second?" Candy finally barked. "I'm _working_ here!"

"Oh, pull yer thong outta yer butt crack, Candy; we're jus' talkin'." Nat replied, bending to look at Veronica in the mirror. "How ya gonna do her hair?"

"Not sure…" Candy ran his hand through Veronica's chin length locks. "It's not very thick…"

"Yah…fine hair's a bitch." Nat nodded, ignoring the look of indignation on Veronica's face. "And it's almost too short to do much with."

"Center part?" Candy quickly sketched a part with his comb and Veronica was treated to the sight of twin grimaces in the mirror. "Oh, FUCK no!"

"Eh…" Nat was shaking her head in distaste. "Makes her forehead look three miles wide!"

"I'm sitting right here!" Veronica said, glaring back at the two, who ignored her outburst.

"That's the trouble with heart shaped faces," Candy went on as though Veronica hadn't spoken. "The imbalance between top and bottom."

"Her face isn't heart shaped, it's square." Nat pointed out.

"It's not square." Candy shook his head impatiently. "It's heart shaped; see how pointed her chin is?"

"Look;" Nat pointed to Veronica's jaw line, "That's a nice, square jawline. Almost masculine. Just because it's not on the facial plane doesn't mean it doesn't contribute to the shape, which is _square."_

"Oh, okay genius, if her face is square, why does a center part make her look retarded?" Candy snapped.

"_What?"_ Veronica blurted between them.

"Because her eyes are so small!" Nat pointed into the mirror. "And they're almost too far apart. See? A millimeter more and she'd be wall eyed!"

"Oh my God." Veronica moaned.

"She's got the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen!" Candy squealed, outraged.

"Yeah, sure; they're real pretty. They're just not real big." Nat nodded. "Just like the rest of her. Which reminds me, Hun, are you gonna be wearing a miracle bra?"

The last was delivered into the mirror, to Veronica, who shook her head, numbly.

"Oh. Too bad." Nat mumbled, peering back into the mirror.

"Well," Candy said, decisively "We can fix her eyes with shadow and lashes, a well shaped brow will eliminate the imbalance, some shading will de-emphasize that jaw and a good, sexy side part will hide the forehead…"

"Oh, honey!" Nat said as Veronica dropped her face into her hands in despair. "Don't take it personally, we're just thinking out loud. You're very pretty."

"Why did I think this was going to be fun?" Veronica raised her face, hovering between laughter and tears. "I never realized I was practically the Elephant Man!"

"Look at that." Nat glanced at Candy as she pointed into the mirror. "What are you gonna do about that _huge_ mouth?"

* * *

Logan was told to take his things and dress in the guest room as the major undertaking in the master bath could not be interrupted for the sake of his own shower. He said he wasn't bothered by an audience but the shriek that erupted from Candy at the very idea of filling the room with steam while he worked could be heard all the way to Lake Calhoun.

Logan came out of the guest room, perfectly dressed in his Lanvin patterned silk tux. He resisted the urge to run his hand through his freshly gelled hair as he bounced down the stairs to await Veronica.

JR found him sipping a scotch and standing at the front windows staring at the lake when he came in from the kitchen, dressed in his own recently purchased tux from JCPenney.

"I brought your crap." He said, holding up the leather jewel case filled with Logan's accessories.

"Good. There better not be anything shaped like a fucking jaguar in there." Logan said, turning from the view of the lake.

"I sent that back weeks ago. If you ever looked at your statements, you'd know that." JR placed the case on a side table.

"I look at 'em." Logan said absently as he flipped open the lid on the box. He grinned as he lifted out the small velvet ring box. With his thumb, he flipped the lid and looked at the large, cushion cut pink sapphire, surrounded with tiny diamonds. "Now there is a ring worthy of Ronnie's finger!" he said with deep satisfaction.

"She'll love it." JR nodded, glancing at the colored stone. "Pick out your own stuff so I can get that back in the safe."

Normally, the jewel case spent most of its time in a bank vault but when they needed access to it, Logan decided that the best place on the property for the safe was not in the house, which was the first place a burglar would look, but in the garage. JR had had a safe made in Nevada, by the same firm that specialized in such things for high class casino/hotels. It looked like an old, beat up Craftsman tool chest, just like millions of others found in every home in America. It even held a large assortment of tools. The second and third drawers from the bottom weren't eighteen inches deep like the rest of the chest, but only six. Behind the two shortened drawers was a false back, with a secret clip. When opened, the false back revealed a keypad complete with thumb print scan. That portion of the tool chest had reinforced steel walls an inch thick, leaving a safe area of 10x22x8 inches. It was more than enough room for the jewel case and any other small items that Logan felt needed protection. The vast majority of the time, it was empty. There were exact replicas of the leather case in both Logan's bedroom and JR's apartment. JR's held his timex and piles of loose change. Logan's held cigars and beer caps.

Logan rifled through the primary case until he had what he needed for the evening which included the Cartier chronometer, falcon eye cuff links and button studs, the leather notebook, gold plated pen, lighter and cigar cutter. He opened the humidor drawer and considered the cigars.

"It kills me that those cigars cost more than my tux." JR observed as Logan tucked two of them into his inner breast pocket.

"Really?" Logan shot him a look of distaste. "You should get a better tux. And _that's_ gonna drive me crazy." As he spoke, he reached out and yanked at JR's inexpertly tied neckwear. "You're going to have to learn to tie a bow, dude."

"You should just let me get a clip on." JR grumbled rolling his eyes as Logan retied his bow tie for him.

"If I ever catch you in a clip on, that will be the end of our relationship." Logan said, carefully making sure the ends matched. "I have _some_ standards, after all."

"Standards but no scruples." JR remarked, holding still until Logan stepped back, satisfied with his handiwork. "Did you really let Mars submit a reimbursement claim for these tickets?"

"Yeh." Logan picked up his scotch and leaned against the back of the couch, wearing the innocent face that by turns amused and enflamed everyone who knew him.

"You don't see how that just may cause some problems for us in the future?" JR sighed with the weariness of one who has lost the same argument over and over.

"No."

"You know the feds are famous for their records. You've heard of a paper trail?"

"The way I see it; not going back for seconds at an all you can eat buffet is an insult to your hosts."

"People have gone to jail for less."

"And yet I have escaped incarceration for far more." Logan mused. "I must be charmed."

"Out of your fucking mind is what you are!" JR glared at him. "And about tonight's strategy…"

Hearing footsteps on the stairs, Logan stood up straight and looked toward the hall. Realizing he'd lost his employer's attention, JR turned and saw Veronica come around the corner.

She smiled at the young men.

They stared, open mouthed and silent, struck dumb with awe.

Her hair was a smooth, shining sweep of pale gold; her skin glowed , her brows perfectly sculpted wings above eyes which shimmered dark blue and mysterious. The dress, with its blush feathered skirt, looked as though she were dressed in flowers, ending above the knee in such a flattering way as to create the impression that her legs were a mile long. That illusion was helped by the four inches her new shoes added to her height.

"Not bad for a mousy haired, lantern jawed, walleyed Quasimodo, huh?" she asked, twirling around. "I never realized how ugly I am until the Beaut Squad got a hold of me!"

"You're usually a mess," Logan agreed when he finally found his voice. "But you clean up pretty nice, Sugarpuss."

"So do you, Sweet cheeks." She came forward and took the lapel of his silk tux between her thumb and forefinger, approvingly. "Nice threads!"

"Glad you like it. I got you something." Logan smiled down at her and presented the ring box.

"OH." She looked up at him in surprise.

"I figured your set needed a ring." He explained, looking at the antique garnets he'd given her for her birthday. The dark red stones against her alabaster skin filled him with a nearly overwhelming desire to bite her.

Veronica opened the box and gasped at the sight of the beautiful ring against the velvet. "Oh, _Logan_!"

He took the ring out of the box and slipped it onto her right hand, which he held as he turned it back and forth, inspecting the gem. "Yes," he finally said. "That looks good."

"It looks wonderful but you really didn't have to!" Veronica half heartedly protested. "The original set was plenty! How much did you spend on this?"

"You have a lot to learn about the gracious acceptance of gifts, Pumpkin." Logan grinned, lifting her hand to his lips and kissing her knuckles.

"I know," she apologized, squeezing his hand in agitation. "But it's so beautiful! Seriously, how much was it?"

"A hundred thirty." Logan shrugged, knowing that his stubborn little wife wouldn't rest until he gave her an answer. "Practically free."

"Oh, thank you!" She cried, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him.

"For Christ's sake, I'm standing right here!" JR exclaimed after a moment or two. "It's a miracle I have any innocence left _at all_."

"Oh yeah," Logan said, sounding mildly surprised, his arms still wrapped around his giggling wife. "I forgot you were there."

"Will you two try to remember that we're working tonight?" JR demanded.

Breaking their clinch, Veronica looked at JR. "Well, _I'm_ working tonight." She said. "You two are just goofing off, as usual. But that reminds me, I have to go get my mosquito; it's the only gun that will fit in my fancy clutch."

Logan couldn't take his eyes off her until she'd disappeared around the landing. Then he turned to JR and looked him up and down in his cut rate tux.

"You still worried about being visible?" he asked with a smirk.

* * *

The parking valets lounging around the Children's Theater entrance to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts had been parking Caddies, Audi's Beamers and other trendy status symbols for the better part of an hour but the flow had finally slowed down. The reception was in the spacious, three story lobby of the museum and many guests were taking advantage of the event to view the Art Institute's many galleries in private but due to the loveliness of the evening, some of the guest who were either more familiar, or less interested in the treasures to be seen inside were taking advantage of the private park behind the large, classical building. The walk through the lawn was lined with torches and waiters brought trays of hors d'oeuvres and champagne out to the patrons enjoying a smoke on the lawn. For guests not interested in champagne, a fully stocked cash bar was inside the lobby. The event planners believed in the importance of a liquored up clientele.

"If there's more than one, are they called 'Lexii'?" one of the parking valets asked no one in particular.

"Shut up." His coworker explained.

"You guys get all the cool cars." The first one complained. "If I have to park one more Prius, I'm gonna open up the trunk and take a dump in it."

"That would be awesome!" his buddy laughed. "I hate everyone I've ever met who owned a Prius."

"My dad owns a Prius." A third valet pointed out.

"Your dad is a prick."

"Think it's okay to take a break?" another valet asked his associates.

"No…they said no breaks until everyone moved into the back."

"We haven't parked anyone in ten minutes," the first valet protested. "I'm gonna go see."

He pushed open the glass doors and approached the tall, thin matron in charge. She was of indeterminate age (somewhere between 50 and 120), dressed in shimmering dark plum silk, with her silver hair piled high, making her look like a six foot tall exotic bird. Her assistant was a younger, shorter version of herself. She fixed the valet with a stern dark eye.

"Yes?" Stork lady asked, tilting her chin up ever so much.

"We wondered if it was okay for some of us to take a break?" the valet asked. "There haven't been any cars in a while."

"Well," she drew a long, slim notebook out of the pocket of her long, purple jacket. She flipped it open and glanced down the pages covered with names that were checked off. "It looks like most of the expected have arrived…"

"What if he doesn't come?" her anxious little assistant blurted, glancing toward the reception area. "People are talking. They'll be so disappointed if he doesn't show up."

"Who?" the stork lady threw an annoyed look at her assistant.

"_You know who_." Her assistant stage whispered, causing the valet to smother a grin.

"Of course he'll be here." The stork lady said, imperiously. "He's on the list."

"But Mrs. Dayton is on the list," the assistant said, her soft voice trembling a little, "And her sister said she won't be coming after all!"

"He bought three tickets, Marjorie." The stork lady sniffed.

"Maybe he just wanted to support the institute?" Marjorie went on. "Sometimes people …"

"One doesn't buy _three_ tickets to an event one has no intention of attending." The stork lady cut Marjorie off and fixed her cold eye on the valet as she slipped her notebook back into her pocket. "Two of you may take a break. I want that door properly manned until all of our expected guests have arrived."

"Yes ma'am." The valet turned back towards his post but grinned as he heard Marjorie speaking in an undertone.

"Do you think he'll buy anything? Last time he didn't! Jacques Stewart said…"

"Jack is a whiney little bitch, Marjorie. I certainly hope you know better than to listen to a word he says."

* * *

Out front again, the valet said to the four others "Bavmorda says…Oh _Dibs_!"

"She said 'dibs'?" another valet asked but his colleague was no longer thinking about a break. He was looking past them all at the vehicle coming down the street. Such a car could only be coming to a hoity toity shindig like the one being staged inside. He pushed past the others as the bright yellow Ferrari purred to a halt in the circular drive.

He was ready to take the keys to the beautiful Italian sport car the moment the driver's door opened. Then, several unexpected things happened at once. First, the driver who hopped out of the car looked no older than the valet; second, instead of handing him the fob, the driver placed his palm on the valet's chest and gently pushed him away from the car as he tossed the Ferrari's fob past the valet; third, another young man in a tux appeared out of nowhere at the valet's shoulder, caught the fob in midair, and turned to the valet.

"Here you go." He said, putting a key in the valet's hand with a smile. "You park that one." He nodded to the Range Rover that had pulled up, unnoticed behind the ostentatious Ferrari.

The valet looked down at the key in his hand as the driver of the sport car went around to the passenger side and opened the door.

Later, describing the game of musical cars to his roommate, one the valets said "I never believed in faires but when I saw that chick float out of that race car, I kinda changed my mind."

The knot of valets stood and stared stupidly as the first young man strode up the walk arm in arm with the most gorgeous vision they'd ever seen and the Ferrari roared off, leaving their colleague to slump behind the wheel of the Range Rover.

Four pairs of eyes stared at Veronica as she and Logan entered the Art Institute.

* * *

"We're so happy you could join us, Mr. Echolls." The elegant woman in charge of the guest list purred as she held out a hand to him. "And your guests, too of course." She allowed Veronica to enjoy the penumbra of her approval.

"My associate is parking my car." Logan said. "He'll be along in a minute."

"Oh, but we have valets; he didn't need to…" Stork lady began.

"Yeah, I've seen Ferris Beuller's day off." Logan interrupted her. "No thank you. By the way, I see you don't allow guns on the premises. Where would you like me to put this?"

Veronica, who had been looking through the three story glass wall between the entry and the lobby at the crowd already enjoying the reception, whipped her head around to see him standing in front of the Stork Lady with a hand gun dangling between his thumb and forefinger.

"OH." The Stork lady took a step back in surprise. "I…uh…"

"Mr. Echolls," Marjorie stepped forward with a nervous smile. "If you'd come with me? We have a safe in the office where I'm sure you can pick up your…gun…at the end of the evening."

"Great!" Logan smiled his most beguiling smile, avoiding Veronica's compressed glare as he offered Marjorie his arm and let her lead him to the office. Just as they went through the glass doors, JR came through the front.

"What's going on?" he asked, seeing Logan disappear into the office.

"This is Mr. Echolls' assistant." Veronica told Stork Lady.

"Is Moneybags in trouble already?" JR asked in an undertone. "We _just got_ here!"

"Oh, there's no trouble, I assure you!" Stork Lady said graciously. "Mr. Echolls inadvertently brought a firearm onto the premises. He merely wishes to be in accordance with the Institute's policy of…um… non…proliferation."

"He brought a gun?" JR said flatly, looking from Stork Lady to Veronica who rolled her eyes. "To an art auction? What the hell did he think was going to happen?"

"Oh, he probably forgot he had it on him." Veronica said, smiling brightly. "You know how he is!"

"Does Mr. Echolls normally do things like that?" Stork lady asked.

"'Normally' isn't the way I'd describe anything he does." JR told her.

"How charming." Stork lady smiled.

Marjorie and Logan returned at that point, Marjorie blushing and giggling and Logan looking as innocent as a lamb.

"You made it." He said to JR, then turned to Veronica and dropped an arm around her waist. "Let's roll."

"Ooh, let's!" Veronica smiled.

They left Stork lady and Marjorie behind them and walked the hall toward the Institute's lobby.

"You brought a gun?" Veronica hissed as soon as they were out of earshot of the two matrons. "What's wrong with you?"

"You're the one who wanted me to start carrying." He whispered back.

"And you thought tonight was a good time to start?"

"Why not? You're packing."

"Not even remotely the same thing!" Veronica pointed out. "And I'm not about to provoke a scene like the one you just acted out."

"What scene? I was perfectly delightful. And anyway, while they were all in a twitter about my gun, no one thought to look for yours." He winked and tapped the side of his head as JR held open the tall, glass door to the Museum lobby for them.

They stood for a moment, taking in the scene.

The lobby and at least two of the galleries were filled with people, all dressed to the nines. The men were nearly all over forty but there were a few who looked to be in their thirties. They all looked sharp and splendid in their uniformly black tuxedos. There were many younger women in the crowd, as rich, older men and young, beautiful women are always found in the same social orbit. Most of the women wore black but plenty of them were dressed in colors.

And every last one of them was blond.

"Needle," Logan murmured to Veronica, "meet haystack."

Refusing to be daunted by the larger number of guests than she had expected, Veronica lead her companions toward the first gallery, where the silent auction was set up. Logan nabbed them each a glass of champagne from a passing waiter as they joined the crowd of bidders.

"Uck. Piss." Logan grimaced, handing his emptied glass to JR. "Go find me a real drink."

"Yes sir, would the lady like anything?" JR said with exaggerated smarminess to Veronica.

"Oh no. Champagne is plenty for a girl such as I." She said in her breathiest Lorelei Lee, clutching Logan's arm. They picked up a card listing all the silent auction lots. The curator offered them the box of pencils but Veronica smiled and held up a pretty little jeweled pen.

"I prefer my own." She said with a smile that made the young man's night. She and Logan made a circuit of the gallery. "Can I really bid on anything I want?" she asked him, loud enough for anyone standing nearby to hear.

"Of course." He said magnanimously. "My only rule is that anything you take home has to be at least as beautiful as you are."

"Well, that certainly let's you off the hook." A handsome, middle aged man holding his own lot card chuckled. "I wish I'd used that on my wife. Last year, I got stuck with a pair of Wooden African masks."

"Ugly, are they?" Logan asked.

"Scary as hell, really." The man replied, smiling at Veronica. "But I was complimenting your date. You're not likely to find anything in the whole place as lovely as she is."

Veronica simpered.

"Wow." Logan said, smiling. "Either I'm going to have to take you out back and beat the shit out of you or go find your wife. If she's hot, maybe I'll invite her into some small, dark room on the third floor."

"LOGAN." Veronica gasped.

"Oh, that won't be necessary." The older man said, unperturbed. "But if you think you could kick start my wife, you're welcome to try."

"There's your problem;" Logan told him. "It's a jump start, not a kick start."

"Hey baby," A tall thin girl with her platinum hair in a chignon and a dress cut down to her navel slipped her arm around the older man. "I just bid three hundred on lot 62. I really want it so remind me to keep an eye on the bids. Oh hello." She smiled at Logan and Veronica.

"What did you bid on?" Veronica asked politely.

"The most amazing set of jewelry, made completely out of old syringes." The girl answered.

"Good God, darling, really?" her date grimaced.

"Art should be dangerous." She said with a toss of her head.

"It sounds amazing," Veronica answered. She followed the other girl back across the gallery to look at the amazing, dangerous jewelry.

Logan and the older man watched the two of them thread their way through crush.

"I wouldn't mind jump starting her in a dark gallery." Logan commented.

"Oh, that's not my wife." The older man smiled. "One set of ugly masks is enough."

* * *

"Well," Veronica said, inspecting the bracelets, pendant and ear rings made of twisted and braided needles. "Those are…something."

"Wearing such things would certainly make a statement." The tall girl said, solemnly. "I'm totally into statement art."

"They don't look very comfortable." Veronica said, looking at the several tiny points that had been left sharp and exposed.

"No, but that's the point!" the other girl said without a trace of irony. "Imagine it; as you wear this set and it pricks your skin, the tiny threads of blood working their way down your throat and into the palms of your hands adding to the beauty of the piece! Your own blood becomes part of the installation. _ You_ _become _part of the statement!"

"That…life is pain and anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something?" Veronica guessed.

"Yes! Oh, you so get it." She nodded at Veronica. "It's the ultimate anti-capitalist statement. It's transcendant." She looked at the ugly jewelry as if it were magical. "I'll outbid anyone here who tries to take it from me."

"Oh my God, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!" another woman said behind them.

"Isn't it?" Veronica's companion turned and addressed the woman with excitement.

"Oh not that nonsense," the second woman dismissed lot 62 with a moue of distaste. "I was talking about _this_!" As she spoke, she picked up Veronica's right hand and the pink sapphire adorning her finger.

"Oh!" Veronica laughed. "Thank you. It's just a little something my date gave me."

"Who is your date, my dear?" the woman holding Veronica's hand asked. "You _lucky_ little bitch."

"It's pretty." The tall blond in love with dangerous art sniffed. "But it doesn't make much of a statement."

"Oh doesn't it?" the third woman raised an eyebrow.

"I don't know," Veronica said. "When he put it on my finger, he said he really, _really_ liked me."

"I'll bet he does!" the second woman laughed but the tall blond just made a disgusted noise and walked away.

"Your garnets are lovely, too." The second woman smiled at Veronica, not the least bothered by the other's departure. "the settings look antique."

"They are. The ring is new, though." Veronica held her hand up to compare the ring with the stones at her neck.

"And it's not a garnet." The woman said thoughtfully. "See how the stone is just slightly pinker? Garnets are known for their dark, almost bloody color. I love them, too. But this…" she picked up Veronica's hand again, "well, a ruby this size…unless you're here with the Sultan of Brunei, I'm guessing it's a pink diamond or sapphire."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure it's a synthetic!" Veronica laughed. "We were looking at a few at the Mall of America the other day."

"A cz with an Oscar de la Renta? You _do_ make a statement." The woman smiled with real amusement.

"But the garnets are real!" Veronica assured her.

"Are you bidding on anything?" the woman asked, indicating the silent auction.

"Oh, I think I'll wait for the live auction later." Veronica said.

"Oh! You're attending that?"

"Isn't everyone?"

"Oh no. That's only for the hard core collectors. You'll see. Most of these folks are just here to support the Institute."

"Oh, I didn't know." Veronica admitted. "Well, I can hardly wait." She put the pretty little pen she'd been absently clicking back into her purse.

* * *

Logan had left Veronica to do her thing and returned to the main reception. JR handed him a lowball outside of the silent auction.

"That's really scotch!" he said in surprise after taking a sip.

"And you're really Logan Echolls." JR reminded him.

"I suspect you have designs on my virtue! Are you trying to get me drunk?" Logan demanded.

"Are you trying to get me busted?" JR shot back.

"Oh relax Shecky. It's obvious you don't know the first rule of entertainment."

"Enlighten me." JR was not amused.

"Always leave 'em wanting more." Logan said, wisely. "Now get me a decent drink."

As Logan uttered the last words, he casually back handed the lowball at JR, who barely managed to catch it before it spilled scotch all down his tux. He schooled his face to remain impassive as he returned to the bar.

After twenty minutes or so of inane conversation while trying to keep an eye on Veronica who was working the room like a pro, Logan drifted off to the other galleries.

The Minneapolis Institute of Art had a very impressive permanent collection and there were small knots of well dressed guests strolling about the building. Logan nodded civily to the other revelers but avoided being drawn into conversation.

Eventually he found himself standing in front of a painting that had caught his eye from across the gallery. Although not large, its vibrant colors and dynamic composition made it stand out among the rest of the works. It was The Carpet Merchants by Jean Leon Gerome. It depicted a scene in an Egyptian market, filled with colorfully robed men and intricately rendered carpets. Logan stared, transfixed.

"This painting mocks me." A sad voice behind him made Logan jump. He turned and saw a nondescript, middle aged man, holding a large tumbler of whiskey and gazing at the painting with a look of despair.

"Oh, hello." Logan said.

"This painting mocks my very existence." The man went on. "It strips me naked, points deep into my soul and cries 'Mene mene tekel upharsin'."

"Oh. Okay." Logan felt glee suffuse his being.

"It weighs me in the balance and finding me wanting, it rams a red hot poker up my ass to stir my entrails and gives me no rest. No peace till the blessed peace of death."

"I think it's kind of pretty." Logan said.

"Pretty?" the man turned his heartbroken gaze on Logan. "Pretty? It's _magnificent._ And its very existence brands me a failure and a sellout. I'm Kirk Sorensen."

"Oh?" Logan extended his hand "You're selling two pieces in the big, double secret auction later."

"Yes." Kirk shook the proffered hand. "Two more pieces of my immortal soul, gone forever tonight. Two more boulders on the scales against my worth. Two more assaults upon my dreams of ever being an artist worthy of my pedigree. I come here to bear the righteous wrath of my would be progenitors."

"As in this guy?" Logan hooked his thumb at the painting.

"Yes. The ancestor that I betrayed by my own hand, casting myself out of Eden." Kirk gazed up at the painting again, his face that of Moses beholding the Promised Land. "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he loses his soul? Nothing." He fixed his eye on Logan. "Believe me, kid; it profits you _nothing."_

"I wouldn't know a thing about it." Logan admitted. "I think my parents hocked my soul for a spread in People when I was about four."

"Impossible." Kirk snorted. "The sins of the father may be visited upon the sons but the son's souls are their own, forever and always. We each of us must take responsibility for our own decisions and actions. You and you alone can trade your birthright for a mess of pottage." He took a long swig of his drink. "That's what I did. Are you guilty of the same transgression?"

"No. I was pretty much born swimming in pottage." Logan shrugged. "But I've fucked up plenty of other stuff."

"Fucking up can be forgiven." Kirk belched. "Even_ I_ could be forgiven if I had the balls to make amends. Alas, I do not."

"What did you do? Murder? Rape? Smoke in New York City?"

That got a dry chuckle out of the despondent painter. "I wish." He said, as he sat down on a marble bench in the middle of the gallery. "Oh, I wish it were that simple. Murder? Yes. I've murdered. Murdered my own potential. Slaughtered my own name. He who steals my purse gets nothing but he who steals my reputation has harmed me beyond repair, blah blah blah. What about he who slits the wrists of his own reputation, hmmm? What about him? Rape? Yes. I raped the very idea of artistic standards. My career is a metaphorical rape committed on the classical ideals of art every day of my life. I'm a rapist, a murderer, a suicide and a prodigal. My family calls me home and I am too ashamed to answer."

"Okay, you had me at red hot poker." Logan dropped to the bench beside him. "What did you do?"

"Oh, you think you want to know?" Kirk looked blearily at Logan and tried to smile. "Fine. Sit down." He took another swig, not seeming to notice that Logan was already seated. "Sit down and I'll tell you such a tale as to harrow up your very soul and freeze your blood…"

"I've seen the Danish Play," Logan cut him off. "Tell me yours or I'm out of here."

Kirk stared at Logan for a moment. Then he heaved a heavy sigh and said "I studied painting under Richard Lack."

"You unnatural fiend."

"That painting," Kirk waved at the piece on the wall in front of them "Is the Carpet M…"

"I know. I can read the writing on the wall." Logan nodded toward the description card on the wall beneath the frame.

"Then you know that it was painted by Jean Leon Gerome. A _master_. As such, he taught his students who in turn taught theirs and the tradition was passed from master to pupil as though from father to son, generation to generation until it was brought to America where it founded what is known as the Boston School…and in this unbroken line the great R.H. Ives Gammell taught the incomparable Richard Lack who opened up his own atelier here in Minneapolis to combat the rot that had infected and spread throughout the art world during the last heinous century and it was there, at Atelier Lack in the early eighties that Mr. Lack, in his vocation to preserve the traditions of truth, beauty and the rules of composition taught me how to draw, how to paint and how to see."

"When's this story get good?" Logan could see that his companion was in danger of falling into morose self disgust if he didn't prod him onward. "You promised me rape, murder and pirates."

"I never mentioned pirates." Kirk corrected him.

"I just threw that in to see if you were paying attention."

"You're good." Kirk raised his glass. "But I digress. Mr. Lack taught me everything I know. Composition, color theory…"

"Cut to the chase, the dawn is near. Get to your monumental screw up."

"I'm a classically trained painter!" Kirk said, pointing at The Carpet Merchants. "I can do that. But in my wild, youthful desire to make a name for myself, I allowed my agent and certain philistinian dealers to talk me into defacing my own work to make it more commercial. In the grip of impending financial doom and an ex wife whose resemblance to a harpy shall go unremarked upon, I succumbed to their unholy suggestion. Calamity. My work sold. Ignorant people who wouldn't know art from shit lined up to throw money at me and they've been doing it ever since." He shook his head and stifled a sob.

"So your great sin is that you've been successful?" Logan snorted, unimpressed.

"NO." Kirk raised his head and glared at Logan. "My sin is that I betrayed everything I believe in! I spit in the face of the tradition I loved, turned my back on everything I had been taught, abandoned my entire belief system and made a mockery of the very concept of ART. I removed myself forever from the company of the men I revere and I did it all for money. I'm a hack and a fraud who will never be able to look Gerome in the eye and greet him as an equal! I'm too embarrassed to even see my old friends with whom I studied! Rick was right. Better a show one can be proud of at the arboretum than sales in this seventh circle of hell. My success is an abomination and every day of my life is a repudiation of my own talent and everything I ever hoped to be or achieve. I have become one with the world and the world, my dear young man, is ugly and stupid."

"Well, fuck." Logan said, sympathetically.

"Oh you don't know fucked." Kirk shook his head. "I come here to do penance. To prostrate myself before this painting and the Bouguereau upstairs…have you seen it?" Logan shook his head. "Oh, you really should, it's wonderful."

"I will. I don't know if I'll have time tonight." Logan indicated that the galleries were emptying and the silent auction seemed to have come to an end.

"No, probably not." Kirk agreed. He sighed heavily and looked at Logan. "You know, my son has some talent. I thought he might be quite good someday. But I caught him sketching with a pastel and he was holding it like _this."_ Kirk pantomimed sketching in the air with a piece of chalk, holding it by the side. "_Can you imagine?"_

"Nope."

"He was doing it _on purpose_! They _taught_ him to hold it like that!" Kirk hissed. "He said that way, he could use the end or the side of the pastel indiscriminately! Indiscriminate? _Nothing in art is indiscriminate_. It wasn't even _sharpened! _The world has descended into the depths of hell and I helped build the bricks that pave the road. I'm so ashamed."

"Look, don't feel so bad. I knew a guy who sold out in a much bigger way than you did and he actually killed someone."

"Really?" Kirk took a swig of his drink. "You're not just trying to make me feel better?"

"Would I lie to you?" Logan asked.

"No. I don't believe you would." Kirk stared hard at Logan. "You're a good man. You have a kind soul."

"You're only saying that because you don't know me. My soul is in the other room."

"No," Kirk shook his head firmly. "You came _here. _To this painting. Of all the loathsome, soul crushing, cock sucking money worshipping sons of Baal in this building tonight, you were the only one who was drawn to the thing most worth seeing."

"I was just looking for the bathroom." Logan stood up. "Let's go. I think you need another drink."

"Oh! You're right." Kirk peered into his empty glass. "I do."

* * *

"Where'd you disappear to?" Veronica asked when Logan rejoined her at the reception. "JR is nowhere to be seen, either."

"I've been making friends. Veronica, this is Kirk." Logan introduced the self loathing artist. "Kirk, meet my soul."

"You are very beautiful. I knew you would be." Kirk said, taking Veronica's hand. "In my youth, I would have wanted to paint you. Now, I am only fit to paint the grossest whore."

"Thanks, that's...the weirdest thing anyone's ever said to me." Veronica said as JR appeared out of the crowd.

"JR, would you get my friend here another-?" Logan raised an eyebrow at Kirk.

"Whiskey." The painter smiled gratefully at JR . "Thank you."

"Did you buy anything?" Logan asked Veronica about the silent auction.

"Trash." Kirk shuddered as JR handed him a fresh glass.

"No, apparently I don't speak the right language." Veronica said. "But I did learn that the steak and potatoes won't be served until later."

"What?" Logan looked confused as she pulled him aside.

"Only a handful of these people were invited to the main event," she whispered. "The auction we're here for is in another building and starts pretty soon. People have been sneaking off."

"You sure that's what they're up to?"

"Pretty sure."

"This is a big place; there's a lot of things they could be sneaking off to do." Logan pointed out. "There's a lot of things _we_ could be sneaking off to do."

"Yeah." She ignored his suggestive remark and looked past him to the great hall leading to several galleries. "But I've seen some of them sneaking off that way." she hooked her thumb back toward the Children's Theater and the dark lawn beyond.

"Mr. Echolls?" the Stork lady appeared with a smile. "I'd like to invite your party to join us in the Target Atrium. If you please?"

Veronica threw Logan a meaningful look. He smiled at Stork Lady. "Can I get a drink in there?"

"Of course." Stork Lady's look included JR, Veronica and Kirk. "Follow me, please."

She lead them out of the lobby and back to the entry. Before they turned through the doors that lead to the park behind the Institute, Veronica stopped.

"I need to use the ladies room, if you would all give me a moment!" and she left her companions as she ran to the washroom. Inside a stall, she opened her beaded purse. She'd bought it at a flea market a few years ago; a gorgeous, antique purse she was only able to afford because the lining was a mess. Parker had sewn a new lining into it for her, according to Veronica's instructions. The new lining was constructed with a false side that snapped shut to hide items that Veronica didn't want seen when her bag was inspected. It couldn't fool metal detectors or x-ray machines but it did come in handy occasionally. She checked to make sure that her tiny gun, a .22 caliber Sig Sauer mosquito, was tucked safely inside the hidden pocket. The mosquito was small, light and as flat as a cell phone, easily mistaken for one in a pat down. She checked her hair and lipstick and ran back out of the ladies room.

When she was within a few feet of her companions and Stork lady, she tripped and nearly fell. Logan caught her but her purse flew open, spilling its contents at Stork lady's feet.

"Oops!" Veronica giggled wildly, crouching to gather up the lipstick, compact, change and other things strewn on the floor. "I knew I shouldn't have had that last glass of champagne!"

"Oh my dear!" Stork lady said sympathetically as Veronica scrabbled at her feet. "let me help."

The two women gathered up the detritus as Logan and JR watched, confused by the sudden clumsiness of Veronica, whom they knew was not tipsy.

"Oh, you are so nice!" Veronica gushed as the elegant older woman crouched beside her. "I'm sure this is not part of your job description!" as she spoke, her hand slipped in and out of the pocket of Stork lady's jacket and JR was presented with a long, narrow notebook which he glared at for a nano second before stuffing it inside his own tuxedo jacket.

"My job description includes accommodating our guests," Stork lady said, handing Veronica the strip of condoms which had flown onto the floor. "And we are very discreet."

"Yes. I've heard that." Veronica nodded as Logan lifted her back to her feet and then gave Stork lady his hand. "Discretion is better than valium."

Once they were sure all Veronica's things were back where they belonged, Logan said "Let's go; Kirk's already inside."

Stork lady lead them out of the entry, across the torch lit lawn. Ignoring the scattered couples enjoying an assignation or a cigar, she lead them down the walk to the small modern building behind the Art Institute. The Target Atrium was a free standing gallery, designed for private events as it offered no access from the Institute itself. Inside, it was a well lit, beautifully presented space that for tonight, was a perfect showcase for the works being offered.

"All the lots are on display inside," Stork lady told Logan. "You can get your number here; all clients and purchases are anonymous, of course…"

"Oh, nuts!" Veronica blurted, rummaging through her purse. "I can't find my mints. Come with me," she tugged on JR's arm, while saying to Logan "You take care of all this; we'll be right back."

Leaving Stork lady with Logan, she pulled JR back out into the night.

"Let me have that book." She demanded.

"How did you know she had it?" JR asked, handing the notebook to her.

"I saw her take it out of her pocket and write in it as we headed into the reception." she flipped it open and perused the first few pages. "I assumed she was checking off Logan's name and I was right."

"How?" JR hadn't seen a thing.

"I was watching her reflection in the glass," Veronica shrugged. The entire wall between the lobby of the Institute and the entry was glass.

"Impressive, Mars." JR nodded. Using the darkness of the night as cover, she took out her jeweled pen, which was of course equipped with a camera, and quickly snapped shots of all the pages covered with names. It took less than five seconds.

"Come on," she said to JR. They opened the door to the entry, tossed the book inside where Stork lady would find it the moment she returned to the lobby, and headed back to the atrium to join Logan. "Now all I have to do is get shots of the heavy hitters inside and match the names and the faces."

"Damn." JR just shook his head as he opened the door for her. They had been so quick that Stork lady was just handing Logan his paddle and bid sheet.

"Did you find what you lost?" She kindly asked Veronica.

"Yes. You're so kind to ask." Veronica said gratefully.

"Come on, Pumpkin." Logan said with a smile and the three of them went in to find seats as the Stork lady returned to the reception to hook the next big fish.

* * *

Logan, Veronica and JR sat in the back corner of the rows of chairs set up for the bidders. The first few lots had gone for tidy sums and Veronica was doing her best to look bored out of her mind. She let her gaze wander around the room, smiling absently at anyone whose eye she happened to catch. Invariably, the men smiled back and the women averted their gazes. The margins of her catalogue were quickly filling up with what looked to the naked eye like doodles but were actually ciphers coded in such a way that only she could read the copious notes she was taking.

Logan was bored out of his mind.

After the first ten minutes, he amused himself by trying to get into Veronica's dress and she went along with it for a few seconds but she was working and finally had to shut him down with a slap and a glare. They drew a few looks but not so many as to say they caused a scene.

"Go get me a drink." Logan snapped at JR, causing Veronica's eyebrows to fly up. She'd never heard Logan use that tone with JR, who didn't blink but slipped silently out of his chair and glided around the room to the bar, which was set up off the side, where one could watch the bidding without getting in the way.

"You were pretty snippy with him," she murmured to Logan, loud enough so the people sitting next to them could hear. "Don't get pissed just because I'm making you wait till later…"

The woman sitting on the other side of Logan rolled her eyes.

"Of course I'm not pissed," Logan assured Veronica. "I'll apologize to him when he brings me a gorram drink."

Another lot, a large canvas covered in brown with yellow drips, went for $11,000.00. A loud groan emanated from the bar. Logan looked over and saw Kirk sitting near the bar, another whiskey in his hand.

"This could get interesting." He mused.

"Really?" Veronica said for the benefit of the woman on Logan's right. "How? Are you going to bid on something?"

"Of course, that's why I'm here." He shot back.

"Baby, I'm so bored!" she whined, knowing Logan would understand what she was doing. "Can't we go dancing?"

"In a little while, Pumpkin." He said without glancing at her. "I need to unload a couple hundred g's before I can be light on my feet."

"You could buy me another ring…" she playfully waggled her bejeweled finger in front of him.

"I could at that." He grinned. "Now would you please zip it? I'm interested in the next piece."

"You are?" she blurted. He glared at her. The next lot came up and the moment the bidding opened, he raised his paddle, giving Veronica a defiant look. He bid twice more but in no time, the bidding was high enough so that he was able to depart the field credibly.

"Did JR ever come back with your drink?" Veronica asked, looking around.

"NO." Logan said a little louder than necessary. Several pairs of eyes flickered in their direction. "That's what you get when you don't beat the servants enough."

"I'll get you a drink." Veronica offered, having noticed that from the bar, she would be able to see and therefore photograph, the faces of all the bidders.

"Don't bother; I'm not even thirsty anymore." Logan grumbled.

"Well then I'll get myself a drink. You're not the only one here, you know." She shot him a look and slid out of her seat. Careful not to get in the way of any bidding, she wound her way over to the bar. There were two or three gentlemen enjoying drinks and waiting for the pieces they were interested in to come up to the block. Kirk was sitting off to the side, perched on a stool, leaning against the wall and sucking down yet another whiskey. Veronica smiled at all of them, ordered a white wine and turned to watch the bidding. Sure enough, she was now facing the entire audience. Raising her catalogue, she lifted her pen and began clicking.

Back in his seat, Logan perused his catalogue and wondered how long he would have to pretend to be interested in anything being offered tonight.

"Hey." The woman sitting beside him leaned into him. He looked up from his catalogue into her eyes. "Ditch the skinny blond." She whispered.

He let his eyes trail down her face, neck and into her cleavage. She was in her mid thirties, extremely hot, stacked and he could see no sign of a bra. He met her large green eyes again.

"Why?" he asked.

"She's not your type." She breathed, raising a perfect eyebrow.

"She's not? I kinda thought she was."

"Please. Insipid isn't your style." She arched her back a little bit. "You need someone with _fire_."

"She promised to handcuff me to the bed and do interesting things to me with fruit." Logan explained.

"Fruit?" the woman said, as though she couldn't be more bored. "That is so 2008."

"Is it?" Logan asked, alarmed.

"Come on." She leaned forward, pressing her breasts against his arm as she breathed the words in his ear. "You need a grown woman who knows what a man likes."

He looked at her for a heartbeat, then reached into his jacket. His hand came out with a black key card between two fingers. He held it up.

"Room 436." He said as she took the card. "See you after the auction." Then he stood and sauntered over to the bar to interrupt whatever what going on between his wife and the Clooney wannabe chatting her up.

* * *

"Are you interested in art?" an extremely handsome silver haired gentleman in a tux almost as nice as Logan's asked Veronica as they stood sipping their drinks at the bar.

"Oh, ever so much." Veronica nodded. "I studied art in school and for a short time, thought I might learn to paint. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that I have no talent." As she spoke, she turned an adoring gaze at the ridiculously ugly canvas on the block. The bidding was up to $15,000.00.

"You know, being a painter is only one part of the art world," her companion said. "There are other ways you could contribute."

"Me? What could I possibly give to the art world, aside of course from supporting the great artists?" she batted her eyes. Men were so easy, sometimes.

"Have you ever considered being an artist's model?" he sipped his drink.

"I…no!" she feigned confusion. "I thought one had to be tall and leggy to model."

"It's only fashion models who need to be two legged giraffes," he smiled, showing perfect, white teeth. "And if I may say, you were clearly made to wear couture. No; painters are more concerned with beauty than body type and you, if I'm not being too forward here, have the loveliest skin I've ever seen. Any artist would jump at the chance to paint you."

"You're very sweet." she wished she could blush on command.

"I know several artists…I could introduce you."

"Do you?" She looked at him, wide eyed. "Could you really?"

"Of course…" he went off into a monologue about how connected he was in the art world and as she listened to him, Veronica noticed Logan rise from his seat and approach the bar. A tiny frown marred her forehead as she also noticed how many people in the room were watching him. Some (mostly women) stared openly but most did it covertly. It was almost imperceptible but from her vantage point she could see the entire room's attention shift as he walked from the back of the seats to the bar near the front. The biggest change was in the personnel running the auction. It was exactly the sort of thing she'd been trained to notice when every one of them seemed to freeze in…what? Anticipation? Fear? Excitement? They were clearly on edge as they noticed that Logan Echolls was on the move.

It reminded her of their first semester at Hearst, when the rest of the student body was just getting used to having a celebrity in their midst. For a brief moment, Veronica remembered the agony of those days; her insecurity and mistrust driving her insane and causing a deep wedge between them. For just an instant, she couldn't hear what the gentleman speaking to her was saying.

Logan's eyes met hers, breaking the spell and enabling her to pull herself back into the moment. She looked up into the eyes of the silver haired man and found him looking at her, clearly waiting for an answer.

"That sounds wonderful!" she purred, having no idea what he'd said. His pleased smile assured her it was the right thing to say.

"There's my friend, my good, dear friend!" a voice slurred from behind her. She glanced over her shoulder to see Kirk, pointing at Logan with the hand not clutching the large tumbler of whiskey and swaying precariously on his seat. "Your luminous soul is, for some reason, speaking to a jackal. Have you come to join her?"

"I have." Logan put a finger to his lips as he bellied up to the bar behind Veronica. "Quiet now."

"Are you enjoying the auction?" The silver haired man asked Logan over Veronica's head.

"Immensely." Logan said, ordering a drink. "But I think my date is bored."

"Not anymore." Veronica corrected him, throwing a smile at her conversational partner.

"I can't imagine such a fascinating woman ever being bored." He smiled down at her.

"Dude, really?" Logan laughed. "Is that the sort of line that worked in the seventies?"

"_Logan."_ Veronica hid her desire to laugh behind a façade of shock. "I've been having a perfectly lovely talk with Mr. um…" she looked up at her companion with a question in her eyes.

"No names tonight," He smiled at her. "You know the rules. Of course, some of us are beyond anonymity, isn't that so, Mr. Echolls?"

"My name is Craig Binky." Logan snapped, sipping his drink and turning his attention back to the auction.

"Crabby. I fear Mr. Binky has been outbid." The silver haired man murmured to Veronica with a wag of his eyebrows. She giggled. "If you'll excuse me now, Lovely lady, I must rejoin my own party." He raised his glass in a silent toast. "After."

As he glided away, she wondered for a moment what he meant by 'after' but didn't really care. JR had finally joined them at the bar.

"Where have you been?" she whispered.

"I had…an emergency." He said, looking embarrassed.

"What kind of an emergency? Logan has been loudly complaining about the fact that you never brought his drink."

"He'll live." JR looked impatiently over her shoulder at his boss, who was apparently greatly amused by Kirk.

"So, where were you, really?" she prodded.

He looked at her, irritated but resigned. "If you must know…I …have a problem when I eat things with too much cream cheese."

"Oh. OH." She broke out in giggles, much to his dismay. A slight ruckus behind them caught their attention.

"Horrors! I must remove myself from these proceedings!" Kirk was struggling to get off his stool.

"Sit down." Logan advised him.

"No, no! I can't watch. I can't stand it; an abominable fraud is about to be perpetrated on the world."

"What's he talking about?" JR asked.

"Don't worry," Logan told him. "He's just blowing off some self esteem."

"His painting is up next." Veronica said, checking her catalogue.

"Should I buy it?" Logan asked Kirk.

"NO! Never." Kirk shook his head so vehemently that his stool tottered. "I couldn't bear it. You know my shame. You're not like these…_sheep_." Kirk finally managed to get to his feet, mumbling to himself. "These…polygamous fellators… philandering sodomites…pederasts…debasers of all things good and beautiful and holy…"

Veronica, Logan and JR watched in fascination as Kirk got unsteadily to his feet, pulled himself upright and faced the audience.

"REMBRANDT," he shouted, "SHARPENED HIS CONTE, YOU COCK SUCKERS!"

And then he passed out.

Logan looked at his limp body on the floor, then turned to Veronica and said "I told you this would be fun."

* * *

Pandemonium ensued.

When Kirk collapsed in a heap, one of the matrons screamed and several people shouted '911! Call 911!'. When some of the attendees realized that EMTs were on their way, they decided it was time to remove themselves from the premises. About a half dozen people stood and made their way to the door but the rest were rooted to their chairs, staring in fascination at the drama by the bar.

Logan looked down at the body at his feet and sipped his scotch. JR stared stupidly at Kirk and did nothing. Veronica knelt and searched for a pulse. She found it immediately; strong and steady.

"He's just passed out but he seems fine," She said, standing. She turned and found herself staring into the chest of the silver haired gent.

"Come," he said "It's time to go." He took her by the left wrist and began to pull her toward the door.

"Go? I'm not going anywhere with you." Veronica protested, pulling back.

"That's not what you said earlier." He said, surprised.

"Well, I wasn't really listening earlier, so I don't think that counts." Veronica said, still trying to pull her wrist out of his grasp.

"Look, I don't have time for this," he said impatiently. "_You_ wanted to meet my friend tonight,_ I_ set it up; he's waiting for us. Knock off the nonsense or you'll regret it."

"Let go of me or _you'll_ regret it!" she snapped.

"I. Don't. Think. So!" he said, clearly struggling to maintain his composure.

"I DO!" As she spoke, Veronica swung her right arm at him and hit him in the jaw. She had no room for leverage and her feet weren't planted so there wasn't much force in the blow but she _was_ wearing a seven carat stone on that hand so it wasn't completely ineffectual.

"OW!_ Bitch_!" the silver haired man's left hand flew to his chin and he drew his right hand back to slap Veronica, who was shaking her hand in great pain.

JR, who had watched the whole thing in a state of shock, threw up his left arm to block the blow, then swung in to the old coot with his right.

While forty two may look like an old coot to a twenty three year old, the silver haired man wasn't really very old and he was much bigger, stronger and more fit than JR.

The auction audience watched with mouths agape as they tussled.

Logan took once last sip and placed his drink on the bar.

"It's absolutely true," he said conversationally to the bartender, who was watching JR get bent in half, "If you want something done right, you _really_ have to do it yourself."

Then he punched the silver haired man in the face. Unlike Veronica's blow, Logan's came from the hip and had the force of his entire body behind it. The crack as his fist connected with the older man's jaw rang through gallery like a gunshot and the older man was actually lifted off his feet and was as unconscious as Kirk by the time he hit the ground. Logan looked at his companions and said "We should probably go."

"This way," Veronica had marked every exit in the building within seconds of entering and there were far too many people trying to crowd out the front door. She motioned for them to follow and headed for another exit.

As they passed behind the auctioneer, who was staring agog at the mayhem erupting around him, Logan stopped for a moment at the podium. Every eye in the gallery was on him. For a heartbeat, he stared back at the three dozen faces watching him, then leaned into the microphone.

"I am Banksy!" he blurted.

And was gone.

To be continued...


	34. Chapter 34 Crazy Beautiful

Chapter 34 Crazy Beautiful

Logan and Veronica slid into the Ferrari from either side and Logan hit the lock button. They turned to each other and simultaneously blurted "THAT WAS NOT MY FAULT!"

Veronica sat back in her seat in surprise. "Your fault? Of course it wasn't your fault."

Logan had slumped forward in relief, his forehead and hands on the steering wheel. "I thought for sure you would pin that on me." He lifted his head and looked at her. "I did _not_ get Kirk plastered; he was three sheets to the wind when I met him."

"It never crossed my mind that you had anything to do with Kirk's condition." Veronica hastened to assure her husband. "And I _never_ agreed to leave with that man!"

"Yeah, you didn't seem very gung ho about accompanying him." Logan grinned. "Good thing he had a glass jaw or we might have been in some real trouble."

"A glass jaw? Didn't feel like glass to me." She grumbled, absently rubbing her hand.

"Totally glass." Logan shook his head firmly. "I was just trying to distract him so we could make a run for it. I didn't think he'd go down like Aceveda with a gun to his head when I hit him. Of course, you softened him up for me, which was _awesome_, by the way! Is pasting guys in the face FBI protocol?"

"He assaulted and attempted to abduct a federal agent." Veronica said loftily. "He's lucky I didn't shoot him."

"You mean 'arrest him', don't you?"

"Maybe. Could be. He's lucky we didn't have to find out." She shrugged. "Why didn't you tell me it hurt so much to hit someone?"

"If it were easy, everyone would do it." He snickered. "The first time always hurts."

"First time? Try 'last time'. I am done with the fisticuffs. I'll leave that rough and tumble to you boy types."

"Jeez, some Uma you are." Logan frowned. "You'll never be able to punch your way out of the grave with that attitude."

"Sweetie, in real life, federal agents almost never find themselves buried alive."

"Not that we know of." He pointed out.

"Seriously; _ow!"_ She shook her right hand again. "It felt like I broke something."

"Really?" Logan grabbed her hand and looked at it, turning it over. He visibly relaxed. "It looks fine."

"Not my _ring,_ my hand."

"Oh." He looked genuinely surprised. Then he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it gently. "It might bruise a little but I'm sure it's nothing. Don't be so quick to give up. Surely you can think of something else that you didn't get right the first time but with a little bit of practice turned out to be lots of fun?"

She raised her eyebrows.

"You know," he prodded. "Like riding a bike…or something else."

"Please tell me you don't enjoy fighting _that_ much."

"Nooo. It may be my second favorite way to blow off steam…" that got him another raised eyebrow before he continued, "… but it's not a _close_ second."

The sound of approaching sirens reminded them that if they didn't want to get caught up in the inevitable but tedious aftermath of Logan's second favorite release valve, they'd best get a move on. Throwing the Ferrari into gear, Logan peeled out of the parking ramp so fast Veronica couldn't be sure, but she _thought_ she saw a parking valet sitting in the open trunk of a Prius.

* * *

The success of her first night in the field had Veronica feeling giddy. Despite the abrupt end to the evening, she knew she had amassed a ton of information. She was excited to get to work collating the names and faces of the participants from the intel on her camera and she knew she could write a detailed description of the entire evening without resorting to the copious notes filling the margins of the catalogue but all of that would have to wait till morning. The way the event had ended had added a spice to the adrenaline coursing through her veins and she could hardly wait to get Logan home.

The fist fight and Veronica's obvious mood had their effect on Logan as well. After gliding the Ferrari into the garage, he was out of the car in a flash, opening Veronica's door and lifting her out into the clear, moonlit night. He spun his laughing wife across the lawn to the house.

"That was so much fun!" she said. "My hand hardly even hurts anymore."

"Next time, don't aim for his bone box," Logan told her as he spun her off her feet and onto the stone patio. "Go for the throat." He tapped his Adams apple just above the collar of his dress shirt. "Doesn't take too much power to have a devastating impact."

"Mmm," Veronica leaned into him. "Anything else I can do that will have a devastating impact without the need for too much power?"

"Don't kid yourself, Sugarpuss." Logan said, dropping a light kiss on her forehead. "You got plenty of power."

She wrapped her arms around his neck and proved him right.

When they came up for air, Veronica looked up at him, dazed. Smiling down at her in the light of the half moon peeking through the leaves, he looked like something out of a dream. She still had a hard time believing he was hers.

"You look _so good_ in that tux." She sighed. It didn't begin to describe what she felt, but it was all she could think of to say. He just laughed and unlocked the back door. Inside, he turned on the light in the kitchen and went straight to the refrigerator where he took a long swig from a carton of orange juice. Veronica trailed along behind, stalking him like a predator.

"You thirsty?" he offered her the orange juice when he was done. "You want anything?"

"Nothing you've got in the fridge," she shook her head.

"There's a double meaning in that." Logan said, putting the orange juice back, letting the door close and leaning against it.

"That's what I like about you;" Veronica said, snapping her fingers. "You always catch my drift."

"I may be pretty but I'm not as dumb as I look and you're about as subtle as a sledgehammer." He said, eyeing her as she approached.

"Don't sell yourself short," she stopped right in front of him. "You are much more than just a pretty face."

"I like to think so." He said, dipping his head and shrugging modestly.

"You're pretty _everywhere_." Her eyes drifted south as she placed her hands on his chest, causing him to catch his breath. He grabbed her and pulled her closer.

"I'm gonna kiss you with every lip on my face." He warned her.

"Every lip?" She raised her eyes to his.

"Yep. Think you can handle it?"

"I don't know; that's a lot of lips." She said, wide eyed.

"Not really. Pretty much the average amount." He dipped his head but she placed a finger on his lips to stop him.

"_Bone box_?"She asked.

They were still giggling and making out in the front hallway when they heard footsteps running across the back patio. Without breaking their clinch, they looked across the kitchen and saw JR yank open the back door and skid inside. Shaking a finger at them, he exclaimed "THAT WAS NOT MY FAULT."

* * *

Up in their room later, Veronica was admiring herself in the full length mirror.

"It's such a shame to have to undo all of Candy's work," she said ruefully, "But I can't talk myself into wearing full makeup to bed."

Logan had carelessly discarded of his tux, leaving pieces strewn across the floor, stepping out of his pants as he entered the bathroom to brush his teeth. She removed her dress and hung it, carefully smoothing it down before placing it in the closet. She went into the bathroom to clean up and even in the harsher light, she looked incredible. She stared at her face in the mirror, fascinated. The work Candy had done was perfect; not a bit of it was smeared or faded. Logan finished brushing his teeth and whispered "Hurry up," in her ear as he returned to the bedroom.

She studied herself, trying to figure out exactly how Candy had done it. With one last, lingering look, she sighed, peeled off her false eyelashes and turned on the water.

"I feel like I'm about to deface a work of art." She muttered, clipping her bangs up off her face to wash it. Then she applied moisturizer and brushed her teeth. When she was finished she looked in the mirror and saw her old self looking back. _God, my forehead really is three miles wide._ She pulled the clip out of her hair, letting it fall around her face before returning to the bedroom.

"Now _there's_ my girl." Logan grinned, crossing his arms behind his head as he stretched out on the bed.

"Here she is; clean, shiny, ordinary." Veronica shrugged as she made her way across the room, picking up pieces of Logan's outfit on her way and tossing them into a heap near the closet before dropping down on the bed beside him.

"You couldn't be ordinary if you tried." He scoffed.

"I'm glad you think so." She smiled. "But I did look pretty damned amazing tonight, didn't I? Candy is a genius."

"Eh."

"What? I looked fantastic tonight!" Veronica cried. "I've never looked better!"

"You always look fantastic. I've seen you prettier."

"You're thinking of somebody else." She declared, flopping down on her back.

"You looked beautiful tonight but it was…a Hollywood version of you. You know that's not my favorite version of anything." He rolled onto his side facing her, with his chin propped on his hand. "Your shining moment tonight was when you popped that guy. _That's _when the real you came out to play. You did look gorgeous but it's when that _thing_, that _Veronicaness_ comes out…_That's_ when you're the most beautiful woman who ever lived."

"Like when?" she honestly had no idea what he was talking about.

"Like…In the lobby of the Sunset Regent Hotel…standing on the balcony of the Camelot…screaming at me for pulling an empty gun in the River Styx…Alterna Prom…crying on the roof of the Grand…sitting in the back of a pickup out in the desert…swinging a crowbar with deadly intent…waking up on Catalina Island last May…" he lightly brushed a finger down her cheek. "Right now."

"Wow. I should have had that written into our vows." She chuckled, playfully shoving his shoulder.

"I'd say it under oath." He rolled over on his elbows so that he hovered over her, looking critically into her face. "Right now, scrubbed clean, nothin' but you…you're _crazy_ beautiful."

"Seriously?" She wasn't chuckling anymore.

"Yeah! You can't honestly believe that I'd rather look at an air brushed mask of you than at your real face? Would _you_ rather I got back into my tux for bed?"

"Uh…" she let her eyes trail down from his freshly scrubbed face across his shoulders, his well muscled back, firm butt and long, lean legs. She lifted her eyes to his again, then reached up and messed up his hair. "Noooo."

"I do like your new dress," He said, thoughtfully, "but the truth is, and I think I speak for all men here; I don't care what you wear most of the time, as long as you're naked some of the time."

She laughed and then looked at him. "Do you have any idea how much I love you?" She asked.

"I love you twice as much." He declared.

"It's not a contest."

"If it was, I'd win."

"No, you wouldn't."

"Yes I would. I love you more than any man has every loved anyone. Romeo and Juliet, Westley and Buttercup, Siegfried and Brunhilda, hell, Siegfried and Roy; _Pikers._"

"Inconceivable!"

"But true."

"Prove it."

So he did.

* * *

Veronica was at work on her computer first thing in the morning. While Logan read the Sunday paper and JR was joined by Bryn in fixing a nice big brunch, she was in their library office, running all the photos she'd taken the night before through a facial recognition data base. By cross referencing the guest list, the photos and government issued ID, she was able to begin matching names to the faces of the folks at the private auction. Referencing the notes she'd taken in the margin of her catalogue, she was hoping a pattern of behavior would emerge.

"I love being a fed." She chuckled, as yet another face was matched to a name. This was so easy it was stupid.

* * *

In the kitchen, Logan and JR were describing the previous night to Bryn, every aspect of which now struck them as hilarious. They were sitting at the large kitchen table, waiting for the muffins Bryn had whipped up to come out of the oven. The smell of warm bran mixed with the aroma of fresh bacon and coffee. Although the nights were beginning to get cooler, during the day, they still kept most of the windows in the house open. A fresh breeze wafted the smell of muffins through the house.

"I have to admit," Logan said, shaking his head at JR. "I was a little disappointed in both of you. Tucker's gonna be pissed that between the two of you, you couldn't take out Clooneytunes."

"I'm a little disappointed." Bryn agreed.

"Hey, he was big!" JR protested. "You didn't see him."

"Size doesn't matter." Bryn scoffed.

"Hear that JR? You can relax." Logan smirked as he raised the sports page.

"What are you talking about?" JR demanded of Bryn. "In some things, size definitely matters."

"That is why you fail," Logan sighed from behind the paper.

"No, it doesn't." Bryn insisted to her boyfriend as they both ignored Logan. "Stand up. You've got what, three inches on me?"

"And about six pounds," Logan offered, looking at his scrawny aide de camp.

"You're so big and strong," Bryn smiled up at JR as she took one of his hands in hers. JR automatically smiled back at her for a half a second before his face contorted and he sank to his knees with a loud yelp. Logan sat up, impressed, as JR knelt on the kitchen floor, shaking his right hand in pain.

"What just happened?"Logan asked Bryn. "How did you do that?"

"Where did you learn to do that?" JR asked Bryn, testing his thumb to see if it still worked.

"At the hands of my five brothers." Bryn reminded them. "We're Irish; I've been fighting for my life since the day I was born."

"You have _five_ brothers?" Logan's eyebrows shot up. "I thought there were only three."

"Five." Bryn answered. "And don't even get me started on cousins."

"That's ridiculous!" Logan huffed. "Why would anyone have _five_ brothers?"

"Hey, I'm with you but my parents wouldn't let me get rid of any of them." She defended her position. "It's not like I didn't try."

"Where do you think she learned to deal with Candy and Piz like she did?" JR asked Logan. "Of course, I could have handled those two and I've only got sisters."

"You knew about this?" Logan asked JR, accusingly.

"Relax, Moneybags; lots of people have brothers." JR said.

"Not _five_." Logan insisted. "That's just ridiculous."

"Tell me about it." Bryn said. "Every day for the first twelve years of my life, one or more of them tried to kill me. It wasn't personal; they tried to kill each other, too."

"Is it true that the Irish fight so much because you're all drunkards?" Logan asked, as if academically interested.

"No." Bryn scoffed. "That's just stupid. We don't fight because we're _drunk_; we drink so it doesn't hurt so much when we _fight_."

"I wish I was Irish." JR said wistfully, considering the bruises he'd attained the night before.

"I think maybe I am a little Irish." Logan said, thoughtfully.

"Show me some more of your moves." JR challenged Bryn.

"At breakfast? I think not!" Logan gasped, feigning offended propriety.

"Her self-defense moves." JR clarified.

"Well, I'm a girl, so I fight dirty." Bryn started. "But we all used a bunch of horrible maneuvers on each other that I'm pretty sure aren't allowed under the Marquis of Queensbury rules."

"You mean like biting?" Logan wrinkled his nose. He really hated the idea of biting.

"Ech, no. I Don't bite!" Bryn shook her head. "You don't know where they've _been_."

"I _know_, right?" Logan nodded sympathetically. "I tried only fighting vegetarians but it was just too complicated and awkward."

"So no biting; what then?" JR asked, ignoring Logan's nonsense.

"Well, there's the ever popular Spock-bite." Bryn placed her hand right where JR's neck and shoulder met, then dug her thumb under the tendon, making JR squeak in pain and twist away from her.

"Hey, I like that!" Logan said, impressed. "Show me that thing you did to him before."

"That was the thumb screw," Bryn hooked her forefinger under JR's thumb and used her own to press down on his nail, using her finger as a lever. "It's a great way to deal with grabby guys."

JR screamed as a sharp pain rocketed up his arm. "STOP THAT! OW!" and yanked his hand away from her.

"That's awesome!" Logan guffawed. "You gotta show me how you do that!"

"…Monkey bumps…" Bryn made a fist, with her middle knuckle sticking out and aimed at JR's forearm.

"NO." he jumped up away from her, laughing. "You're killing me! Don't demonstrate on me anymore!"

"Show me!" Logan held his arm out for her.

"Moneybags! This stuff _hurts_." JR warned him.

"Don't be such a pussy." Logan dismissed his henchman's warning and two seconds later, was sucking air in through his teeth, watching a sharp welt rise up on his arm where she'd rapped him with her knuckle.

"See? Who's the pussy now?" JR shook his head as Logan rubbed his sore forearm.

"And those are just the run of the mill moves." Bryn said, shaking her head. "Rib knuckles are worse and if you ever really want to hurt someone; go for the wire."

"What, like piano wire?" Logan asked, thinking of the Sopranos.

"No; we didn't know it was called an Achilles tendon, we just called it your wire."

"What did you do to it?" JR slowly asked, not at all sure he wanted to know.

"You don't have to do much," Bryn said, "In fact, in didn't take very long where I could end a fight just by threatening to pinch their wires."

"You…pinched…your brothers' _Achilles tendons_?" Logan asked, horrified.

"Well, see; that's the beauty of the wire pinch; you only ever have to do it once." Bryn explained.

"That's…the worst thing I've ever heard." He said in awe and then rubbed his palms together in melodramatic delight. "How _marvelous!"_

At that moment, the oven dinged, signaling that the muffins were done. Bryn hopped up from the table and JR watched her as she and went to take them out of the oven. Logan turned his attention back to the comics.

"She is so far out of my league." JR sighed, gazing adoringly at Bryn as she handled the hot muffins.

"I won't tell her if you don't." Logan murmured, offering his fist for JR to bump in solidarity.

* * *

The combined smell of bacon and bran muffins was too much for Veronica to resist. She closed her computer and ran through the living room, to be greeted by the startling sight of her husband sitting at the kitchen table with his fingers entwined with those of the very pretty brunette beside him. Seeing Bryn and Logan intently holding hands made the bottom drop out of her stomach but before she could even remind herself not to be so stupid, the jealous flare was replaced by shock as Logan shrieked and slid out of his chair.

"Well, this clearly isn't what it looks like." Veronica announced. "What's going on?"

"I told you it hurt." JR said smugly, sitting back in his seat with his arms folded, watching as Logan shook his arm out, laughing in spite of himself.

* * *

After cleaning up breakfast, Bryn and JR were off to a street festival out west of town.

"You guys want to come along?" Bryn invited Logan and Veronica. "It's really fun; folks dress in period costumes and sell all kinds of handmade arts and crafts. And don't get all snobby on me; they're really good. There are booths, games, gifts, clothes, music,_ lots_ of entertainment. And the food is outstanding. There's fencing and jousting on horseback!"

"Sounds like you're really into it." Veronica laughed.

"The Renaissance Festival is where I first fell in love with folk tales." Bryn admitted. "The whole idea of an earlier, simpler society struck me as completely romantic. A world where princesses were real! For a while I flirted with the idea of auditioning a character myself. I thought I could read fairy tales to kids but it was all a lot more work than I counted on. The audition process is really cut throat. It's a great way for actors and artisans in the Midwest to showcase their talents but it doesn't pay much. The money is all in the booths."

"Actors and artisans in the Midwest?" Logan mocked.

"I know you left coasters think all theatrical talent resides either in Hollywood or New York but you're wrong." Bryn defended her native artistic community. "We've got plenty of talent right here. You'd be surprised."

"I would." Logan smirked.

"Don't be a snob." Veronica elbowed her husband. "Where does this Fair take place?"

"It's out in Shakopee. About ten miles straight south of the Arboretum."

"The Arboretum?" Logan perked right up as that word rang a bell. "What's that?"

"Oh." Bryn sighed and rolled her eyes, ecstatically. "The Arboretum is one of my favorite places on earth! It belongs to the University of Minnesota and it's where all their agricultural and botanical research takes place. Basically, it's an enormous agrilab masquerading as forests and gardens."

"Yeah, it's incredible." JR nodded. "She took me there a couple of weeks ago."

"It'll be even prettier now," Bryn said. "The colors are peaking. But you should see it in the spring when the peonies and apple trees are blooming! And every year, they have a different art experience spread throughout the property. Last year, it was Fairy Gardens. My favorite!"

"It does sound great," Veronica said, reluctantly. "But I really just want to get back to work."

"She's like a dog with a bone," Logan explained. "Give her a case to chew on and it'll take a lot more than flowers and fairies to pull her away. And 'Shakopee' sounds like something that happens to recalcitrant patients in the psych ward. That's not someplace I want to go."

* * *

"If I had known how to do Bryn's thumb hold last night, I just may have gone with Mr. Silver hair." Veronica told Logan when she took a break and joined him on the patio a few hours later.

"WHAT?" Logan lowered his Golf Digest and glared at her.

"I can't deny that part of me was very curious as to what he had up his well dressed sleeve." She said, innocently.

"With no briefing, back up or exit strategy?" Her husband cried. "Just try something like that, Missy and you'll learn the meaning of '_grounded for life'_."

"Oh relax, dad." She assured him. "My assignment was only to get inside and watch what happened, not to approach or confront anyone. If they had thought there was any danger at all, I'd have had backup. This was nothing more than information gathering. That shot I took of the full guest list and all the folks at the private auction has yielded a treasure trove of info."

"I love Big Brother." Logan mumbled.

"I've been matching names to faces and later," Veronica opted to ignore him, "I'll write my report and we decide what to do next, if anything."

"How much are you going to put in your report?"

"Everything. Right up until the moment Kirk hit the floor. I'll leave out the part where you knocked one of the patrons on his ass but the rest may be important."

"You gonna admit to hitting that guy yourself?"

"I don't see how that's pertinent." She said, and then giggled. "I'm not sure I want to admit that I hit a guy and he didn't even notice! They might not let me back out in the field alone."

"You weren't alone."

"You know what I mean. Either way, I have no intention of setting _your_ antics down in an official document."

"A decision that I'm sure the passage of time will render ever wiser."

"He seemed pretty set on my leaving with him," Veronica mused. "I hope I didn't blow my chance to uncover a white slavery operation or anything."

"So when you have his name, run a background check and see if anything sticks." Logan suggested.

"Anything like what?" she cocked her head at him.

"Um…monthly trips to Bangkok. Huge sums of money showing up mysteriously in his accounts. Lots of foreign 'nieces' applying for student visas…Stuff like that?"

"Is that what white slavers do?"

"Why are you asking me?" He looked at her.

"Seems like the sort of thing you'd know about." She shrugged, thoroughly enjoying the look of alarm on his face.

"You've got some pretty weird ideas about what I do in my free time." He muttered.

* * *

"Report." Section Chief Larson looked at his Assistant Director, Dru Johnson.

Without consulting his notes, Johnson rattled off the state of the dozen or so cases the field agents under his supervision were working. Dru Johnson was a short, slightly pudgy, fair complexioned, balding middle aged man who could blend into any crowd in the western world. He could easily pass as a soccer dad or a Washington diplomat. He was the guy standing next to you in line that you would never remember seeing. He was so blah that if you rode an elevator with him, you'd remember it as being a solo trip. He rarely initiated conversation and spoke as though words were a rare and expensive commodity. He had closed an impressive amount of cases by keeping his mouth shut and letting felons talk themselves right into prison. He also had a mind like a steel trap, a photographic memory and an easy going management style that made him a favorite with the field agents who reported to him.

"So what do you think of Agent Mars?" Larson asked, after Johnson's litany of case briefs.

"Impressive." Johnson said with a nod.

"How so?"

"Paperwork's all in order," Johnson began. Getting the receipts and reports from field agents was a daily headache for those who ran the bureaucracy.

"Her experience as a P.I. ingrained some good habits," Larson mused. "The self employed know the value of organized paperwork. She's definitely got a leg up on most rookies."

Veronica's receipts had included not just the voucher for the three tickets to the gala but the fruits of her wardrobe credit card as well. The gal in the accounting office had raised her eyebrows when Veronica had dumped the bag of used makeup, nail polish and a pair of stiletto heels on the counter, along with all of Candy's receipts for supplies and services rendered but as far as Johnson or Larson were concerned, as long as she had dotted her I's and crossed her T's, those details didn't matter.

Johnson grunted at the suggestion that Veronica merely had a leg up. "She turned reconnaissance into background checks."

"How so?"

"She's two steps ahead." Johnson explained. "Event was Saturday night. By Monday a.m., she had the start of a comprehensive list of names, running checks to sort the clean and dirty laundry. She's already working up a list of Persons of Interest. Kid doesn't waste time."

"Direction?" Larson asked Johnson what orders he'd given the young agent.

"Unnecessary." Johnson replied. "She knows the drill."

"Good!" Larson nodded. So far, Agent Mars was proving to be quite an asset to the agency.

* * *

"I spent the day running background checks on my list of names from the auction and so far, no obvious red flags have come up; nothing that screams "Money launderer" or even "Shady Character" but one strange and interesting item has already come to light." Veronica told Logan that night at dinner. "It seems one of our fellow art lovers was arrested late Saturday night, trying to break into a room at a five star hotel downtown."

"Really?" Logan looked up from his salad with a minimum of interest.

"Yes." Veronica said with exaggerated interest. "Care to guess which one?"

"If she has any taste at all, it was the Ivy."

"Good guess!" Veronica pretended to be impressed.

"It is the best hotel in town." Logan shrugged off the no brainer.

"She claimed to have been invited by a guest but the hotel manager says the key card she tried to use was six weeks out of date."

"Huh." Logan helped himself to a chunk of baguette. "That is certainly strange but why is it interesting?"

"What if I pointed out to you that the room she was trying to get into just happened to be the very same room reserved back in August for one Stosh Piznarski?" His wife asked, regarding him with her head cocked to the side.

"Hmmm." Logan raised his eyebrows. "That's mildly interesting but it's not like there are that many five star hotels in Minneapolis."

Veronica sighed. If she couldn't get a straight answer to a crooked question, she was perfectly willing to ask straight up.

"You want to tell me how some babe from the auction got her hands on the key card Parker left in our guest room?"

"Moi?" Logan said with a grin, "what in the world makes you think I know anything about it?"

"Pulling stunts like that is no way to win friends among the artsy crowd." Veronica shook her head. "You're going to get a reputation as a trouble maker."

"I'm pretty sure that ship sailed long before Blondie got arrested."

"So you knew she was blond!" Veronica pounced.

"They were all blond." Logan pointed out.

"Did you make the date before or after you punched out Mr. Glass Jaw?"

"Ah yes; the guy _you_ made late night plans with." Logan reminded his little wife that he hadn't been the only one at the auction fending off unwanted attention.

"I did not!"

"He thought you did. You know perfectly well I had time for nothing but the exit after I cancelled your date."

"Well, I didn't get him thrown in _jail_." Veronica tried to point the conversation back at Logan's behavior.

"No, just the emergency room."

"That was all you, too, Sugar Britches."

"Art _is_ fun." He sighed, happily.

"Do you really think we're going to skip the part where you invited a woman to meet you in a hotel room?"

"Should I have invited her back here?" He asked.

"Not unless you were planning on burying her in the garden." Veronica cheerfully explained.

"That's what I thought." He nodded. "Don't try to pretend you think for even one second I considered actually meeting her there."

"I know. I understand why you don't want the world at large to know we're married but do you think you could _not_ ask women on dates while you're out with me?"

"I did NOT ask her out. She did the asking...actually, the insisting. I told her I was tied up later in the evening and she wasn't impressed. I didn't set up an assignation; just a humiliation. I never thought she'd get _arrested _but I hope she learned to take 'no' for an answer. So the hussy spent the night in jail; don't cry for her, Argentina."

"Maybe _you're_ the one who barely escaped a meeting with white slavers." Veronica mused. Then she frowned. "You probably shouldn't meet with any art-loving babes without back up."

"If word gets out about how that particular art-loving babe's attempt at after-partying with me went, I don't think we need to worry." Logan smirked.

"You're going to get a reputation as a tease." She giggled.

"That'll confuse people, won't it?" Logan looked very pleased by the idea.

"You did manage to throw her off the scent." Veronica nodded with approval. Then she sighed and shook her head. "It's just too bad that I didn't get to see how the last few canvases sold. I can't help feeling like I may have missed something big just because Kirk can't hold his whiskey."

"Oh! Well, maybe I can help."

That afternoon, Logan had returned to the Art Institute to retrieve the gun he'd forgotten about in their mad dash for the exit. While he was there, the curator had informed him that a low key, informal gathering was being set up to finish the sale of the works that had still been available when Saturday night's event had crashed and burned. If he was still interested, his name was on the short, exclusive list of patrons being invited to bid on such important pieces before they were made available in general. Logan had given a non committal answer, having no idea whether or not he was interested.

"If you think it's important, we can go." He told her.

"But no one is bringing a date." Veronica pointed out.

"I'll get you in." he assured her. "But that's not the only item of interest I discovered this afternoon."

He told her that Kirk's cryptic utterances had stuck in his head and he'd remembered it after Bryn mentioned the Arboretum.

"In addition to the University's gardens, there's a gallery in the Visitor Center that features different shows that run a few months." He told Veronica. "Kirk said something that made me think it might be worth a look."

"Oh?"

"Plus, I hear the colors are peaking this week."

"Hmmm. That could be very informative." Veronica nodded. "And I can't help it if it's fun, too."

"There's a restaurant on site, too."

"Even the Bureau has to acknowledge that a girl's gotta eat."

"Tomorrow?"

"It's a date."

* * *

Tuesday morning Veronica only spent an hour or so at the office, then logged out to further explore the local art scene. She and Logan took the Ferrari out high way 5 to the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, referred to in local shorthand simply as the arboretum. Turning off the road, which had dwindled to merely two lanes by the time they reached their destination, they went up a winding wooded drive to a sentry shack, paid the daily admission and continued on to the parking lot. That short drive was enough to reveal that they had timed their visit well; the trees were at their autumn peak. Even the parking lot, just past a tree shaded pond, was gorgeous. Each row of cars was separated by a wide bank of trees, all glowing with color.

They walked toward the large Visitor Center adjacent to the parking lot. In front of the rambling, two story building was a garden, surrounded by a topiary hedge in which the slim trunks had been woven into a natural fence. Autumn blooms of every description vied with the colors of the turning trees. Beneath a sky so blue it seemed solid, the colors were almost too much.

It was such a lovely morning that they decided to see the gardens before going in search of the gallery, so they turned left and went through the gates to the left of the Visitor Center front patio. They followed the stone walk beneath the trees to the formal gardens beyond. There they found sculptures, banks of flowers, an herb garden, a knot garden, a floating bridge, waterfalls and fountains complete with lilly pads and frogs.

"Could this be any prettier?" Veronica asked as they reached the end of the first formal garden.

"Turn around." Logan nodded to the north.

Down the hill, the highway could no longer be seen through the colorful trees. About a half a mile from where they stood was a wide, glorious view of Lake Minnewashta. It looked like an illustration by Maxfield Parish or N.C. Wyeth.

"Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!" Veronica breathed.

Logan craned his neck, searching the sky.

"What?" Veronica asked.

"I'm looking for the giant pink bubble with a good witch inside."

Across the narrow road, they found the large Japanese garden which included little temples, a large coy pond with a waterfall, an herb garden, a rose garden a fraction of the size of the one by Lake Harriet and beneath the canopy of the forest, a hosta garden containing dozens of varieties of the plant. The road led through the woods in a three mile loop that visitors could drive or walk and in the winter was a popular trek for cross country skiers. Skiing was the last thought on either Logan or Veronica's mind as they were drawn deeper and deeper into the woods where they saw a pond beside which a bronze sculpture of a long legged heron permanently watched over the fish. Signs informed them that to follow a wood chipped path into the woods would bring them to a wild flower garden and to stay on the road they would find themselves at the shade tree exhibit. Following the road, they went up a hill to a spot where a well placed bench afforded a wonderful view of another larger pond.

"Anywhere else in the world," Logan said, gesturing at the pond, "They'd have built vacation homes around that. Here, it's not even big enough to be designated a lake."

The road curved away from the pond and through the woods. On a Tuesday morning, there were a few cars that slowly passed them but they saw no other pedestrians. It was easy to imagine they were the only people in the world.

"This looks so familiar." Veronica said, looking up into the red and golden canopy of the maple forest about them.

"Oz?" Logan suggested.

"No, better." She said. "Lothlorien!"

"Ah! Where the only evil that exists is that which you bring with you." Logan nodded. "No wicked witches."

They strolled past a hill covered in a dozen different species of shade trees, each with a bench beneath the canopy with a placard describing the tree. Another wide loop brought them out of the woods to walk along the foot of a broad hill covered in grass and wild flowers. They passed a field filled with nothing but weeping trees. Around another bend, they found a second, much larger rose garden in which the bloom laden bushes were laid out in curving beds surrounding a large, flat pool where a bronze sculpture of two children dangling their feet in the water sat right beside a sign asking that people refrain from actually wading in the pool.

"Talk about mixed messages." Veronica laughed, looking at the clear, cool water.

"What?" Logan was already ankle deep in the pool, his discarded sandals in his hand.

At the back of the rose garden, through some trees, there was a long, broad staircase down the hill for any hikers who needed a short cut back to the Visitor Center. With no reason to hurry, they headed back out to the road where every bend brought more breathtaking views.

In the distance, above the bright tapestry of autumn colors rose a golden hill. Perched on the crest, blazing against the blue sky was a bright red barn so perfect that it looked like it had been painted onto the horizon.

"That can't be real!" Veronica laughed.

"What? You think someone put that there just for us?" Logan grinned.

"It's…it's just crazy!" she shook her head. "Did we walk through a poppy field when we weren't looking?"

"A poppy field? Make up your mind; are we in Oz or Middle Earth? Or maybe you think we're in Afghanistan?"

"Are we dreaming this?"

"Want me to pinch you?"

"No, if it's a dream I don't want to wake up!" she danced up the road.

"Me neither," He followed her. "I can't wait to see what's next!"

Beyond the rose garden was a dahlia garden, a field of apple trees of all descriptions, a woods made up entirely of maple trees, and a hedge exhibit. At various intervals along the walk, they caught glimpses of the red barn on the hill to the east which looked so perfect there in the autumn sun that Veronica couldn't help but ask "Are we in Heaven?"

"We're not even in Iowa." Logan answered.

They walked along the road with the sun warm on their backs, feeling like the only two people in Eden. Eventually, they found themselves beside a hedge maze, complete with a tall wooden lookout. They climbed the stairs and looked out across the maze.

"This…is so cool!" Veronica cried.

"Time me." Logan said, bounding down the stairs to the gate that opened into the maze. Veronica stayed in the perch and was entertained by Logan's efforts to navigate his way through the maze. Eventually, he made it back out and they sat laughing on a bench in the shade of the trees beside the maze.

"Kids must love this place." Logan said. "Did you know that Bryn has five brothers?" he asked, holding up his hand for emphasis. "_Five_."

"I know how many five is," she laughed at his outspread fingers. "So?"

"So, it's not unheard of to have a lot of kids. People are still doing it. People besides Fitzpatricks and Mexicans, I mean. Bryn's cool and Finbar is a genius."

"A genius?" Veronica raised an eyebrow.

"According to JR." Logan said it as though that were the last word. "And he's the youngest of _six_."

"Your point?"

"That it's possible to raise a houseful of normal, better than normal, smart, cool kids. If the Malloys can do it, we can do it."

"Of course we can! Anyway, they only have six." She teased. "I thought you wanted seventeen."

"I'd be willing to see how the first six go," he shrugged, "And then take the next eleven one at a time."

"I'd kinda like to take them each one at a time, if you don't mind."

"That doesn't seem very efficient." He shook his head.

"Really?" she looked at him. "Do you think the production will become onerous?"

"Not unless we're doing it wrong." He joked but noticed a cloud pass over his wife's face. "what?"

"What if…" she bit her lower lip, suddenly very aware of the evil she had brought into Lothlorien. "… I can't get pregnant?"

"Ronnie, we haven't even been married for six months."

"I know! And we agreed to let nature take its course but…"

"Did you want me to knock you up right away?" He asked, surprised. "'Cause I can take you back into that maze…"

"No." she laughed and shook her head. "No, I was hoping to have maybe a year…or even two all to ourselves, first. Get a few closed cases under my belt before taking any maternity leave. It's just that we..uh…"

"Do it all the time? I know." His voice was smug.

"And now that we…"

"Do it all the time?"

"It just seems really unlikely that I'm not."

"There could be a million reasons for that."

"I know. And one of them could be..."

"You were treated for that." Logan couldn't bear to hear her utter the word. He would never get over the pain of knowing that she had been raped and infected with an STD.

"Yes."

"You've had a clean bill of health for years." He took her hand. "And infertility is a very rare complication, usually only if the infection goes untreated."

"I know." She squeezed his hand. "I wasn't even remotely worried about that until…"

"We started doing it all the time?"

"I had it, undetected, for _two years_."

"And then modern pharmaceuticals knocked it right out of your system. God bless Eli Lilly! You're fine."

"I'm sure you're right," she admitted "but I'm scared."

"Why?" he ran his hand through her hair. She looked up at him.

"Because it's something we both want." She whispered. "We want it so much that it would make up for everything we lost. I know how important it is to you; it's that important to me, too. A family is the one thing_ I_ can give to _you_." She chewed on her lip. "But what if I can't?" She was on the verge of tears by the time she finished, so she was a bit surprised by his reaction to her confession. He pulled her close as he started to laugh.

"You already have, stupid." He said, dropping a kiss on her forehead. "I'll tell you what; If, in a couple of years, after you've closed a dozen or so cases and been promoted to Assistant Director, you're still not pregnant, we'll adopt. There's gotta be some kids out there who wouldn't mind having us as parents."

"You'd be okay with that?"

"I'd rather have a dozen or so little clones of you but if we have to outsource, I can see the appeal of a horde of little African, Korean, Russian or Chinese kids calling me 'Dad' and obeying my every whim."

"Brad and Angie got nothing on us." She laughed, unreasonably relieved.

"Has anyone ever told you that you worry way too much?"

"I've heard a rumor that I'm a bit of a control freak," She conceded, "but it's completely unfounded."

* * *

Back into the woods, they passed along the edge of the bog which had its own boardwalk trail through and around it. Finally, they found themselves at the bottom of a hill, with a stream on the left and a pond on the right. A pavilion overlooking the pond was occupied by what looked like a class of school kids on a field trip. Up the last hill, they were back between the first rose garden and the formal gardens surrounding the Visitor Center. They had taken their time exploring the walk so it had taken them well over two hours to cover the three miles. They were starving.

It was easy to find the restaurant; behind the Visitor Center, nearly in the garden itself, was a veranda covered with tables beneath green umbrellas. There were a few folks sitting out enjoying food or drinks but not too many, since it was long past lunch time.

The restaurant was set up cafeteria style, offering things from ready made salads and sandwiches to hot soups, pizza and sandwiches. There was a large, lovely room filled with tables for indoor eating as well but Logan and Veronica took their lunch out onto the patio.

"I feel like we probably should have looked at the gallery first," Veronica said, digging into her salad. "How are any paintings going to stack up against what we've just seen?"

"I think we should come out here and wander around before ever buying another piece of art," Logan said, eating his pizza. "Puts things in their proper perspective, you know? Although in all honesty, this place really isn't any more spectacular than the lakes. We've just gotten kind of used to them."

"Really?" She aked. "You think?"

"Yeah." He shrugged. "The gardens here are great but none of them are any better than the rose garden at Lake Harriet. The view of that lake is gorgeous," he nodded toward Lake Minnewashta "But it doesn't beat the view out our front window. How about the Tin Fish from across Lake Calhoun, with the downtown sky line behind it? Come on."

"I guess you're right." She conceded. "But this place is pretty damned impressive, you must admit."

"I do. It is. There's only one thing that could make this any better."

"Oh yeah? What?"

"Amy's Ice Cream."

* * *

When they'd finished eating, they dumped their trays in the return bins and went downstairs, prepared for an anticlimax when they reached the gallery behind the gift shop.

The Reedy Gallery in the Visitor Center consisted of a long, broad hallway behind the spacious front lobby. It was a well lit, forty foot long space with high ceilings and plenty of room to step back and take a good look at the two dozen or so paintings that filled the walls on both sides. Sometimes the gallery exhibited works by various artists that conveyed a specific theme, sometimes it featured different artists who painted in similar styles or subject matter, sometimes it was a mishmash of wildly different canvases and occasionally the entire space was devoted to the work of a single artist. Today was one of those times. The walls were covered with oil and watercolor paintings by the same local artist, Richard K (unpronounceable). The theme of the show was plein air. Every painting had been done on location, somewhere in the metro and nearly every one of them was at the edge of water; a lake, creek, pond or waterfall.

"OH. Pretty!" Veronica cried.

Logan felt like he'd been hit in the midsection with a two by four. He experienced an acute case of déjà vu.

Years ago, his parents had taken him to Paris for a week after school let out. He'd been pissed off that they'd dragged him away from home during summer break when he'd rather have spent the days surfing. To make matters worse, while Aaron had worked, Lynn had forced him to sight see. At thirteen, he had been unimpressed with anything the City of Light had to show him, since he was too young to get into the Moulin Rouge. On the last day, they'd dragged him bitching and moaning to the Musee D'Orsay. Lynn had wanted him to see a real Monet, up close and personal. He remembered that he'd liked the statues of naked ladies in the center gallery of the main floor but had been bored nearly to death before they reached the permanent collection on the fifth floor. Getting off the elevator, he'd perked up slightly at the information that there was a café at the far end of the galleries. He hadn't expected to be knocked off his feet a few seconds later. But he'd turned the corner into the gallery only to be pummeled by the sight of the gigantic Sorolla that spanned an entire wall. It depicted a fishing boat being towed to shore by oxen, the sails filled with wind and sunshine, the ocean's horizon glistening in the back ground. He had felt clobbered as he stood there staring at the larger than life painting.

"I know, honey!" His Mom had squeezed his shoulders as she stood behind him. "Didn't I tell you it would be worth it? Can't you just _taste_ the salt water?"

He had turned and smiled at her, feeling for the first time in his life like they understood each other. Standing in front of that enormous, magnificent painting, he had felt connected to his Mom.

"Yuck." Aaron had said, wrinkling his nose. "Who wants to look at a wet cow? You two knock yourselves out. I'll be in the café." Logan had seen the look of hurt cross his mother's face and for the first time consciously admitted that he hated his father.

The small scale paintings in the Reedy Gallery were nothing like Sorolla's larger than life seascape but once again he was overwhelmed with a feeling of kinship with his Mom.

Slowly, he walked the length of the gallery, studying first the paintings on one long wall, then the other, shaking his head. Finally, he turned to his wife.

"Ronnie, this is the guy." He whispered.

"The guy Kirk told you about?" she asked. "I know. Isn't that why we're here?"

"No, no! This is the guy my Mom found twenty years ago. This is the guy who painted the one she bought!"

"You mean our watercolor?" Veronica looked more critically at the works covering the gallery walls. "Yes, it does look like it may have been done by the same hand. They have the same…esthetic."

"May have been?" Logan demanded. "Look at the signature! That same scribble is on ours. I never thought I'd see his stuff again but this is it! _He's right here_!"

"Yep." She nodded. "All over the walls."

"I was little when Mom first started buying paintings…before kindergarten but I remember how excited she was this one time, she had been back in Chicago doing a TV show and she said she discovered a brilliant artist. I don't remember anything else she said but she was sure she had gotten the bargain of the century. I remember because when the painting was delivered, Aaron said something that made her cry. She hung that painting in her dressing room. Now it's in our living room. This is the guy."

"Well," Veronica turned over the brochure she'd picked up out in the lobby. "He lives in Chaska, which is…about a mile from here. His influences are Homer, Turner and Sargeant. It shows. I didn't know people painted like this anymore."

"They don't. These are for sale." Logan was peering at the cards attached to the walls beside the paintings. "I'm gonna buy them."

"What, all of them?" Veronica asked, alarmed. The prices on the paintings ranged from $700.00 for a small 8X10 watercolor to $4500.00 for the larger oils. "Do we have the wall space?"

"I'll buy a bigger house."

"I like our house." Veronica objected as Logan stalked the length of the gallery, mentally adding up the price of the paintings.

"I can't buy all of them." Logan admitted when he came back to her side.

"No, you can't." Veronica agreed.

"Three of them have already sold." Logan sighed. "Besides, the remainder of the show would set me back about $36,000.00. Horshack would shit a brick if I spent that much especially since I already used the investment angle on your ring...hmmmm..."

"My ring?" Veronica said, ominously. "What does a hundred and thirty dollar ring have to do with spending $36 thousand on paintings?"

"What?" Logan looked surprised, caught thinking out loud. "Your ring didn't cost a hundred and thirty dollars."

"You said it was practically free." She reminded him, a hollow feeling opening up in her stomach.

"It was. I liquidated some of our precious assets and converted them to jewelry. Our bottom line didn't change by so much as a dime."

"H..how much is that ring _worth_?" she demanded.

"A hundred and thirty."

"_Thousand?"_ she squeaked.

"It's a pink sapphire, Sugar Puss. They don't exactly grow on trees."

"But…but …but…"

"You stuck?" he asked, amused.

"_The ones at the mall_!" she cried.

"Were synthetic. Nothin' but the real McCoy for you, Dollface." He looked at the paintings on the walls. "Nothin' but the real McCoy for _us_."

"I feel sick." She murmured. Alarmed, Logan helped her to a small bench beside a wall. She put her head between her knees. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I was afraid you'd freak out. Clearly, I was mistaken." He said, dryly. She glared at him from between her knees.

"'The trick to wearing fur is to wear it as though it were cloth'." He explained with a shrug.

"_What?"_

"Coco Chanel. She said that's the trick to wearing fur. It's even easier if you think its fake fur."

"She also said that the trick to wearing _cloth_ is to wear it as though it were _fur._" Veronica straightened up and glared at him. "I can't believe I was wearing the price of _a house_ on my hand the other night and you didn't _tell me_."

"Weevil's house, maybe." He said with a moue of distaste.

"I _hit a guy_ with that ring!"She groaned.

"Should've hit him with a bigger house. You'd have flattened him."

"What if I'd broken it?" she demanded. "What if I'd lost it?"

"You usually lose your jewelry?" he asked. "It's insured. Besides, I've seen the lengths you'll go to recover what's yours."

"Logan. Darling. Sweetie. Love of my life. I don't want to be responsible for _a 130 thousand dollar piece of jewelry!"_

"Ronnie, Sweetie, love of my life; you're not. It's back in the bank, locked up in our safety deposit box. JR and Wells Fargo are responsible for it."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?!"

"Yes, and if you'll stop over reacting and think about it in a rational manner, you will feel better."

Since there were few things that bothered Veronica more than being accused of being over emotional, she took several deep breaths and tried to be rational.

_The ring is an investment. It's locked up safe. I don't have to worry about it. I did enjoy wearing it. My God, it's a beautiful ring. Logan has been wanting to give me something extravagant since we got engaged. I own a seven carat pink sapphire. Omigod. I own a SEVEN CARAT PINK SAPPHIRE. _

_Cool._

She looked at Logan again and took a deep breath. "How much did that dress cost?"

"Twelve grand." He said, shrugging one shoulder like it was twelve dollars.

"OMIGOD." Her head went between her knees again.

"It's an Oscar de la Renta, Ronnie. And you rocked it like nobody's business. It was worth it! You looked and felt like a million bucks the other night!"

"Well, I SHOULD have." She said.

"Yes." He insisted, holding her gaze. "You should. All day, every day."

They stared at each other for a moment, in a silent battle of wills until it suddenly occurred to Veronica that there was nothing to fight about. She loved wearing that dress and she knew damned well they could afford it.

"Are you really going to buy_ all_ the paintings?" she asked.

He looked around the gallery again. "No. Not today. It just seems wrong to buy art in bulk. You pick out your favorite and I'll pick mine."

In the end they bought three. Two oils; one of the cherub fountain at Lake Harriet and another of a waterfall and a watercolor of a silvery pond in a spring time woods. He really liked all of them but Veronica convinced him not to buy any more until they knew exactly where they would hang them.

They agreed to allow the paintings to remain with the exhibit as long as it ran. Logan gave the curator his black Amex and JR's contact information to have the paintings delivered when the show was over. Their paintings were all marked 'private collection' by the time they left the arboretum.

* * *

Having acquired three remarkably beautiful landscapes for slightly under nine thousand dollars, they didn't feel remotely tempted by anything being put on the auction block on Thursday evening when Mr. Echolls and his assistant were among the select group admitted to the Target Atrium for a very below the radar auction. This time, there were no parking valets, no waiters, no crowds, no party, no artists; just potential buyers. And of course, an open bar.

Veronica followed her husband up the walk from the parking ramp to the small building behind the Institute with no fear at all of being recognized.

Last weekend, she had appeared as a long legged, glamorous vision on Logan Echolls' arm. Tonight, with her hair parted in the middle and gelled severely back off her face, untouched by makeup and half obscured by a pair of large, black rimmed glasses, dressed in a plain white, buttoned down shirt, a tight gray vest over dark gray flannel pants and flat, black loafers, she looked as tiny and uninteresting as a human mouse and was nearly as invisible as Jeff Ratner.

"Mr. Echolls!" the Stork Lady greeted them as they came in the door, "We are so happy you decided to join us this evening."

"Maybe we can prevent this trip from being a complete waste of time," Logan said, his voice bored beyond measure as he waved away the brochure and bidding card Stork Lady tried to give him. "Ms. Argen will take care of those."

Stork Lady smiled at his rudeness and handed the items to Veronica saying "Here you are, then."

Veronica glared at Stork Lady so fiercely the poor woman flinched.

"Don't talk to her," Logan warned. "She's brilliant but she doesn't interact. Aspergers."

"OH, I see…I'm…sorry." Stork Lady said to Logan. She then silently handed the auction items to the girl still glaring at her like an angry tweety bird.

"Come on, Tina!" Logan barked, snapping his assistant's attention away from Stork Lady, to scamper up the aisle after her employer.

Logan made some perfunctory but unenthusiastic bids as his weird little assistant scribbled furiously in her notebook, occasionally leaning over to whisper words of advice in her employer's ear. Just for fun, he got into a brief bidding war over Kirk's last canvas with the very same woman who had admired Veronica's ring at the party. His 'brilliant' assistant advised him during the brief but exciting back and forth as the price of the canvas soared higher and higher. Those watching the exchange naturally assumed she was feeding him intel on the artist's reputation, the prices he was currently commanding and the likelihood of the value of the piece increasing over the next few years.

What she actually breathed into Logan's ear as the bidding soared close to seven figures was "If you bring that fugly thing into my house, you're sleeping in the garage."

Terrified of missing out on a chance to nab an early work by 'the next big thing', several other buyers had joined in the bidding by the time Logan threw down his paddle, ungraciously conceding defeat. The blond woman held her ground, beating out two other buyers to take the Sorenson for $910,000.00

The winner of the bidding war was appropriately smug while Logan's short laugh was misinterpreted as bitter disappointment. In truth, he was disgusted. Thinking about the price he'd paid for the beautiful paintings hanging at the arboretum and the fortune Kirk's hideous canvas had just garnered, he thought it was no wonder Kirk drank. The world might be crazy beautiful but the artist had been correct when he said it was stupid.

Logan left the Institute empty handed once again. He nodded curtly to the curator as he walked out, his mousy assistant nearly running to keep up with his much longer strides.

They managed to keep their laughter bottled up until the Ferrari hit the highway.

* * *

All in all, it was a fun evening and no one from the auction, had they happened to be at the Fine Line on Saturday night, enjoying Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers in concert, would have entertained for even a moment, the thought that the hot blond dancing with Mr. Echolls was in fact his intense, mousy little assistant.

To be continued...


	35. Chapter 35 Serendipity

_Authors note; please go to and donate to the Veronica Mars movie project. There are only three days left! The more we donate, the more smouldering we'll get! MLP_

Chapter 35 Serendipity

As October blazed, Veronica dug into her research in earnest. She compiled dossiers on all the attendees of the private auction. Most of them had backgrounds that gave her plenty to work with; tangential connections to people in whom the bureau took an interest; the criminal element were always trying to blend into the upper stratosphere of society and the movers and shakers were rarely so squeaky clean themselves that they turned their noses up at newer, dirtier fortunes. Where big money and politics are, criminals can always be found.

But Veronica needed more than passing acquaintance; she was looking for evidence of market manipulation and money laundering. Her biggest problem with this case was not a lack of leads but the danger of being distracted by questionable business and personal dealings that had nothing to do with the case she was trying to make. She met briefly with Johnson every morning to keep him up to speed on what she found. Most mornings, he sipped his coffee in silence and just listened to her report. Once in a while, he asked to look at a dossier himself. Veronica liked the fact that he didn't assert himself as her supervisor but gave her free reign to follow the information as she found it. She knew better than to think that any one piece of information would break something wide open. After a few weeks she was confident enough to eliminate several names from her list of persons of interest. She went to work digging into the back grounds of the names still on that list. She was in her element; delving into the lives of a dozen or so perfect strangers, unearthing their secrets and trying to put all the pieces together. She was sure she was getting somewhere but was less confident that her bosses would see what she considered slow progress that way. After about two weeks of this, Johnson stunned her by telling her to keep up the good work. Her years of private detective work had not prepared her for the slow, deliberate turning of the wheels of a federal investigation.

* * *

Logan was enjoying as much of the still warm days as he could. Little by little, he noticed the sailboats disappearing off the lakes and then one day in the middle of the month, they were gone. All the city lakes had row upon row of empty buoys where boats had been tied up all summer long. And then one day, the buoys were gone as well. The sun was still bright, the air was warm, the sky and water were brilliant blue but the sun was setting a little earlier every day, the glorious colors were fading, the leaves were falling and boats were gone.

He didn't mind. It just made the lakes look bigger. Temperatures were falling at night. Not so much that he and Veronica closed their windows. They certainly hadn't had the furnace on but the lower night time temps were definitely having an effect on the water. At the beginning of October, the water was cooling down but it hadn't reached Pacific Ocean cold yet. The best waves always occur in the winter months, when the waters off southern California are not at all what one imagines while listening to the Beach Boys. That surf is cold. Logan always kept a wet suit in his car and by mid October, he was using it.

He didn't stay out on the water as long as he had when it was hot. He spent more time on his bike or in the gym with JR. They had added free weights and a couple of machines to the arsenal downstairs. Joe Tucker was working with them four days a week, now. JR fancied that he was noticing an increase in his muscle mass. Veronica still kicked his ass when they got in the ring together.

* * *

"Come the zombie apocalypse, this right here is my weapon of choice!" JR said, firing a slim metal bolt into the target attached to the hay stack thirty feet away.

"I hear the zombies are due to arrive on Halloween." Logan said, notching a feathered bolt into his own pistol cross bow.

They were standing in a field at the southeastern edge of Lake Calhoun that had served as an archery range for over fifty years. The marshy meadow was bigger than a football field and hedged in by the lake, Williamberry Woods and Lakewood cemetery. The earth was soft and springy and during the summer months it wasn't unusual for makeshift volley ball courts to be set up near the bike path that ran over the hill between lakes Calhoun and Harriet. The trolley tracks running from Lake Harriet followed the edge of the cemetery past the range but were far enough away from the targets to pose no risk. There was no sign of the neighborhood on the other side of the wooded hill behind them. Only the downtown skyline, visible across Lake Calhoun, reminded the two young men that they were still within the limits of a bustling metropolis and not out in the middle of nowhere.

On this day in mid October, it seemed like the world was theirs. The trolley only ran on weekends this late in the season. The bike path running between the lakes was still used but there was nothing like the traffic of a month or so ago. The lake to their left glittered a brilliant cobalt blue and although some of the trees had shed their leaves, most of them still blazed with the remains of their autumn colors. The archery range itself was a golden expanse of dry grass and dead leaves. The sun was warm but the breeze coming across the lakes held a cool edge. Neither JR nor Logan had any idea what the breeze foreshadowed; they just thought it was refreshing.

"Yeah, AMC must think zombies are the new vampires." JR said as he watched Logan take aim.

"Well, we definitely need a new monster; vampires suck these days."

"They're vampires. They're supposed to suck." JR pointed out. Logan grinned and lifted his pistol bow, talking aim.

"You sure these little things will take out a zombie?" He asked as his first shot missed the hay bale completely, burying itself harmlessly in the berm behind the bales.

"Yep." JR twirled one of the pencil sized bolts. "At close range, one of these through the skull and that's all she wrote."

"I don't know," Logan notched another bolt. "I think I'd rather have a gun."

"Think about it, Moneybags; noise attracts them. Guns are noisy. These are silent but deadly."

"Like a fart." Logan said as he took aim. This time he hit the bale but not the target.

"I'm sure your farts have a wider kill zone." JR remarked. "But they're useless against the walking dead."

"I don't know," Logan smirked. "After I've been eating Indian food, I'm a force to be reckoned with."

"I'll take a pistol bow over your gas track any day of the week." JR said, squeezing off a shot. He nicked the edge of the target. "When stealth is the name of the game, this is definitely your ticket. You could pick off zombies all day long with one of these and they'd never know you were there."

"Did you see that episode of Deadliest Warrior that put zombies up against vampires?" Logan notched a bolt and took more careful aim. "The zombies won but it was totally bogus; the attack was a hundred against three."

"In all fairness, zombies would outnumber vampires." JR pointed out.

"Wouldn't matter; Vampires are super strong and smart…" Logan missed the bale again. "Zombies aren't just stupid, they're _mindless_. They can't plot, plan or work together. Their only strength is they're fearless. My money's on three vampires over a hundred zombies seven days a week."

"They're not completely mindless." JR objected. "It's not like you'd be fighting house plants! They're more like animals, operating on nothing but instinct and appetite."

"How would they even find a vampire?" Logan asked. "No body heat; no smell. What would even mark a vampire as prey to a zombie? Nothing! And vampires can _fly."_

"Didn't the show have them trapped in a warehouse or something?"

"Yeah." Logan snorted. "Like _that_ would ever happen."

"That's where a TV show that compared the fighting abilities between vampires and zombies lost you? The battle field? Are you also the guy who wants to know where the Tin Man got an axe?"

"The Tin Man always had an axe. Did you know the Scarecrow had a gun?"

"He did not!"

"Did." Logan insisted.

"Well then why didn't he use it?" JR demanded.

"Maybe guns don't work against Wicked Witches, especially if you trap them in a warehouse." Logan said sarcastically. "It's like they _wanted_ the zombies to win!"

"Maybe they did." JR shrugged. "Zombies are the new hot monster."

"I don't get it." Logan shook his head. "Vampires are charming and sexy. Zombies are just ambulant meat sacks. No personality."

"They're both dead." JR suggested.

"Undead. Whatever. But Vampires aren't decomposing." Logan pointed out. "They're like, physically perfect, strong and smart. Vampires are cool. Zombie's are ugly, getting uglier by the minute, dumber than house plants and smell like shit. Why would anyone root for a zombie?"

"They're more fun; easy to kill." JR sighted and took a shot. It nicked the edge of the target they'd tacked onto the hay bale. "They're slow and stupid. Sitting ducks."

"The ones in 28 Days Later weren't slow or stupid." Logan said, notching a bolt into his pistol and sighting.

"Technically, they weren't really zombies," JR nit picked. "They were living people infected with the rage virus."

Logan looked at him for a moment, thinking, and then nodded in agreement.

"Like Reavers." He said, his first shot no better than JR's. "Not _dead_ but guys who had been chemically altered."

" 'We meant it for the best!'" JR quoted as he squeezed off another shot, once again nicking his paper target.

"The horror of both vampires and zombies is that you could find yourself face to face with someone you cared about…" Logan mused. "…and now it's you or them. Talk about emotional conflict."

"Well, I think the mythology developed around the idea that evil comes in seductive forms. Vampires are hot but you have to invite them in; Zombies are gross but they'll break down your door."

"The classic trade off." Logan's next shot was worse than his last. "Vampires get eternal youth, strength and beauty but they have to live by iron clad rules. Zombies are just death, running rampant."

"Bryn says in mythology there are always rules of balance." JR said. "In real life it's kinda the other way around."

"Is it?" Logan's eyebrow said more than his words.

"Sure; beauty, power, fame…those things open all doors." JR explained, refusing to be intimidated. "That's why we're here, isn't it?"

"Might be why you're here." Logan pulled another bolt out of the package. "I'm just enjoying beautiful autumn day, working on my marksmanship. Getting ready for the zombies."

"It does seem like they weighted the battle pretty heavily in favor of the zombies." JR had to admit. "I mean, a hundred boyscouts could probably beat three ninjas."

"Fifty, if they're Eagle Scouts." Logan finally managed to nick the paper target. "Especially if they had toys like these."

"If you don't tighten up, you're dead meat when the zombies arrive, Moneybags." JR shook his head. "Concentrate! You're all over the place."

"Trust me, dude; if the zombies ever show up, my concentration will be legendary."

"Better be. You have to shoot 'em right through the brain to stop them." JR pointed out. "A shot through the neck won't stop a zombie."

"I know; destroy the brain in a zombie, use silver on a werewolf, take the head right off a vampire…"

"I thought you needed a wooden stake through the heart?"

"Nah; that just paralyzes them so you can chop off their heads." Logan took aim again. "That's the only way to keep a vampire down. When Vlad the Impaler died, they buried his head in a separate place from his body. The locals didn't want to take the chance that he'd rise."

"Who's Vlad the Impaler?" JR frowned as he took aim again.

"The real life guy that Count Dracula is based on. Haven't you seen FFC's film?"

"The one with Winona Ryder?"

"Yeah. It starts out with the legend of the real guy; Vlad."

"That movie has Winona Ryder _and_ Keanu." JR's voice was ripe with disdain. "Why would I ever watch that?"

"It's so cheesy you barely notice the ham." Logan happily agreed. "But watching Anthony Hopkins eat the scenery is worth it." He took careful aim.

"What about sunshine?" JR watched as Logan hit the edge of his target.

"I'd prefer it if you stuck with 'Moneybags'." Logan remarked, satisfied with his shot.

"Doesn't sunshine kill vampires?" JR rolled his eyes.

"Yeah. It either reduces them to ash instantly, or it saps their strength but they'd have to be pretty darned desiccated for an infusion of fresh blood not to perk them right up." Logan looked at JR. "And they don't actually need to sleep in the dirt, it's just that Bram Stoker wrote Dracula long before the age of refrigeration. There's a long, revered tradition of vampire lore. No way they're all OCD, either; just because you become a vampire I see no reason why you'd automatically develop psychological quirks."

"Just because you've suddenly stopped aging, can only ingest living blood and can't go out during the day is no reason to suddenly go nuts?" JR grinned.

"Exactly." Logan notched another bolt. "I'm sure the folk tales about vampires predate Stoker but he's the guy who took it all and made it coherent. I don't know where zombies came from."

"Ummm…voo doo?"

"Who do?"

"You do." JR put one near the center of the target. "Check me out! Actually, I think zombies might be an off shoot of the Golem legend."

"Gollem?" Logan frowned. "Smeagol?"

"No, _Golem._ Although I'd bet Tolkien's use of the name was deliberate." JR said. "The Golem is in ancient Jewish folk lore. He's a mindless monster, made of mud..."

"Say that ten times fast." Logan smirked.

"…brought to life with the Hebrew word for 'truth'. It has to be written on it or attached to it somehow. Usually it runs amok and kills people. Like Frankenstein."

"Frankenstein's creature was intelligent." Logan informed him. "The scientist got in trouble not so much for bringing it to life but for _abandoning_ it."

"He did?"

"Yeah. Come on, you don't think DeNiro would play a zombie, do you?"

"You never know. Well anyway animating the inanimate is never a good idea. You wouldn't want to run into a zombie or a golem in a dark alley at night."

"Not without one of these suckers up your sleeve." Logan hit the edge of his target again. "Or a gun."

"Even with, you'd better hope it's a zombie and not a golem; one of these through head wouldn't even slow a golem down." JR's shots were getting closer to the center of the target.

"No? Shit."

"No; the only way to kill a golem is to change the word 'truth' to 'death' which fortunately in Hebrew all you have to do is erase one letter."

"Convenient."

"Of course, you still have to get close enough to do it."

"Crap."

"Yeah, it's a good story."

"Well, I still put my money on vampires." Logan said as he notched another bolt. "They're the most bad ass of the monsters."

"You mean before Brad Pitt made them boring and Twilight made them stupid." JR nodded.

"Twilight." Logan spat as his bolt hit the bullseye. "Chick made a fortune but ruined an entire genre to do it."

"Nice shot!" JR approved. "You may survive the zombie apocalypse after all!"

"Stoker's Dracula was a character of romance," Logan went on "After all, it was his search for Mina that drove him but turning the entire thing into one big chick lit bang fest is going too far. In the original, Mina was enchanted by the monster but you're never lead to believe that it was a good thing; she needed to be rescued, not _envied._ The problem with the new crap is that we're supposed to ignore the fact that we're looking at chicks who want to have sex with dead guys_. _What the fuck?"

"You're the one who said vampires were sexy."

"They've got no body heat! I don't care how hot she looks; No way I'm gonna snuggle up to a chick who's room temperature."

"Thank God for small favors."

"And think about it; you're a smokin' hot immortal with super powers. What the fuck are you doing in _high school_?"

"I think you're taking the whole thing way too seriously." JR laughed.

"I don't know what it says about the state of society when chicks have to turn to the undead for romance," Logan said, firing the last bolt. "I weep for my generation."

* * *

The nights began to cool down considerably. Veronica awoke one night, shivering from head to toe. The breeze blowing in through their open bedroom window had turned cold. She could have gone over and closed the window but that would have meant getting out of bed. She snuggled closer to her large, warm husband instead. He didn't wake up, but obligingly scooped his shivering little wife into a cocoon of his arms and legs where she fell back asleep, warm as toast.

The next day, JR was dispatched to buy thermal blankets and the biggest down comforter available. During the day, the air was so crisp and fragrant that they couldn't bring themselves to close the windows, but when they went to bed, Veronica did remember to close them nearly all the way; just a crack to let in the fresh air but thermal blankets to keep from waking up, doing their sleeping popsicle imitations.

* * *

"Duluth!" Logan exclaimed one evening as Veronica dragged her exhausted body through the kitchen door. "Let's go!"

"Why?" she asked.

"Surf's up!" He replied, clearly excited.

"In _Duluth_?" She frowned. "I think you're confused."

"No, I've been hoping for an opportunity to surf Superior, I just didn't think there'd be any good waves so early in the season but a storm is passing through right now and the waves for the next three days are supposed to be killer; Let's go."

"There's a storm? You're not making the case for a trip to Duluth, Baby Cakes."

"The storm will have passed by morning. The sun will be out, the sky will be blue but the waves are supposed to stay good for a few days. Guys have been surfing twelve and fifteen footers for the last two days! We could leave tonight and I could catch some eight to six footers tomorrow morning."

"Logan, its Wednesday." She reminded her husband with a laugh. "I'm supposed to go to work tomorrow."

"Can't you work from home? Or Fitger's Hotel in Duluth? It's a fancy pants four star establishment, I'm sure they have the interweb."

"Well…"

"Come on! It's less than three hours away. Two and a quarter in the Ferrari." Logan said persuasively, only to frown and shake his head. "No, we can't take the Ferrari. I need the Rover to haul my gear. Still; not even three hours away to a unique surf adventure I've been waiting years for!"

"You've been waiting years for a chance to go to Duluth?" she teased. "News to me."

"I have spent my adult life searching out cool places to surf…"

"Your adult life being the last twenty three months."

"I was emancipated at seventeen." He reminded her. "So it's been nearly five years. And now we live a quick jaunt from what may be the world's finest fresh water surf. You can't tell me it's mere luck that a storm just _happened_ to kick up some gnarly waves this early in the season, when the sun is still warm and the beaches aren't snowbound, our very first season in Minnesota. That's not luck; that's _serendipity_. Pack your overnight bag."

"And what am I supposed to do in Duluth all day while you're out dancing the gnarly waves?"

"Whatever you want; sleep in, walk the shore, shop, sit in our four star hotel room and work on your handy little laptop; they're portable, you know."

"That sounds lovely but why don't you go without me?"

"I want you to come." As he spoke, he picked up her hand and kissed her knuckles. "I don't want to go without you. Think about it; you, me, the big lake they call Gitche Gumee." He turned her hand over, pressing his lips to her wrist. "It'll be fun!"

"You don't play fair." She said, struggling to keep her knees from turning to water.

"I win, cheat or quit." He said, opening her palm and pressing a kiss into her hand. "But I don't lose. Ever."

It took all her will power to pull her hand away from his mouth, saying "You know I'm no fun when I'm neck deep in a case."

"If I thought you weren't any fun when you're neck deep in a case," he said, rolling his eyes, "I'd never have thought you were any fun at all."

"It sounds like you've got plenty to do. You won't even miss me." She said plaintively as he slid his hand around her neck, his palm flat and warm on her skin.

"I will when I get to my beautiful, romantic hotel room with a view of the lake and no one to share it with." He massaged her neck in a way that he knew made her go weak. "We'll go out for dinner, maybe catch a show at the DECC or find some club where we can dance."

"That does sound fun." She moaned, letting her eyes flutter shut. "Why don't we go this weekend?"

"The waves could be gone by then. Surf's up _now_." Unfortunately for Logan, that broke the spell.

"You've never minded taking surf trips without me before." She said, sliding out from under his carress.

"You don't want to come to the San Francisco of the Great Plains with me?" Logan's shoulders sagged.

"It's not that I don't want to go…" she tried to explain. "I _can't_. I have a meeting with Larson tomorrow morning."

"I thought your boss was named Johnson."

"He is. Johnson is my immediate superior and I've been reporting to him on the case. Larson is the Section Chief."

"Why are you meeting with him? Can't you reschedule?"

"First of all, a lowly rookie agent does NOT reschedule a meeting with the SC. Second of all, the message I received, which was more like a summons, didn't include an agenda."

"So what does that mean?"

"It's got to mean that the meeting is about a certain matter that I asked the SC to help me with a few months ago!" Veronica said, excited. "I don't know what else it could possibly mean. And I'm not about to give Larson an excuse to blow me off. If he's finally got something for me on OCB, I'm not about to blow it."

"OH fuck, Veronica!" Logan cried. "Not that again!"

"What do you mean 'again'?" she demanded. "This is the first break I've had in _years_."

"Blow it off." He shrugged. "Who cares what Gory's up to? I sure as Hell don't."

"I know you don't." she sighed, putting her hands on her hips. "What I don't understand is why not. You have no idea what those people are capable of…"

"_I_ have no idea?" Logan interrupted. "The way I remember it, _I'm_ the one who spent a day hanging from the ceiling."

"You think that since Gory's first attempt to kill you didn't work, he's no threat. I've seen reports of what those guys do. The bodies turn up with no hands, feet or head. The scars he left on your back would be the only way I could identify you."

"You don't think you'd recognize my…" He glanced towards his crotch.

"I JUST WANT TO KEEP YOU SAFE!" She cried, refusing to let him joke about it.

"Remember how pissed you used to get at me when I said that?"

"Yes."

"I'm beginning to empathize."

"Logan, Gory may have been incompetent when he tried to kill you himself but he could have learned a lot in three years." Veronica sighed. "He could send someone else after you! I just want to be able to keep an eye on him myself. This could be my only chance to get that advantage and I'm not willing to risk losing it just because the surf's up on Lake Superior."

"Veronica, I spent a day with that guy. I'm surprised he can remember how to tie his shoes. I'd be _shocked _if he remembers me at all."

"Do you know how lucky you are that he didn't kill you? What if you and I hadn't gotten back together? What if you and Heather hadn't had a standing game of Mario Cart? What if I hadn't known about Jake Kanes' connection to Gory? It wasn't luck that saved you, Logan; _that_ was serendipity! And I'm not about to risk your life on it happening again."

"DAMN IT." Logan slammed his fists on the granite counter. "I can't believe my plan to spend a few days surfing Lake Superior have been thwarted just because my wife doesn't want me to get killed by Russian mobsters."

Veronica giggled at his mock indignation. "Seriously, go without me. If you want, I can join you Friday evening."

"I wanted to see Lake Superior for the first time with you." He wheedled.

"Are you trying to guilt trip me?" she asked, incredulously.

"Would that work?"

"No."

"Fine." He blew out his cheeks in exaggerated acceptance. "There'll be other chances to surf Superior. I guess."

* * *

The next morning, Veronica was annoyed with herself for how excited she was going into Section Chief Larson's office for her private meeting. For three years, she had exhausted every avenue she could think of to find Gory Sorokin. The man had vanished without a trace and if she were honest, that fact made her more nervous than if she had discovered that he had been moving up the ranks of his Uncle's organization. To have disappeared seemed far more ominous and dangerous than accumulating a record of any kind of achievement.

When she had opened the email from Larson's office, she had expected the usual field office update. Instead, she had read the terse note commanding her to appear upstairs first thing in the morning. No interdepartmental greeting, no agenda; just a summons for Agent Mars to present herself at the section chief's office.

Her current case was occupying an enormous amount of her time and energy but it hadn't pushed the other matter out of her mind. She had begun to despair of getting anywhere with her request to contact OCB but had hesitated giving the section chief another push since she was pretty sure he'd given her the case at hand at least in part as a show of good faith. He had to know that using her marriage to the Bureau's advantage cut both ways. Reading that email, she felt her patience had been rewarded.

She ducked into the ladies room to make double check her appearance. Satisfied that she was all tucked in and professionally sleek, she marched up to his assistant's desk.

"Oh." Cheryl looked up at Veronica with an odd look in her eyes. "Agent Mars." Then the look vanished, she smiled and said "Section Chief Larson is expecting you. Go on in."

"Thanks." Veronica said, a small v between her eyes as she tried to decode that something in Cheryl's eyes. Had it been…fear? Pity? She mentally shook herself, determined not to be too disappointed if Larson told her OCB had said to kiss off. She took a deep breath as she turned the knob and walked into Larson's office. She felt ready for anything.

Except what she found waiting for her inside.

* * *

"Good morning, Agent Mars." Larson said from behind his desk. "Have a seat. I believe you remember Special Agent Morris?"

At his words, the statuesque blonde standing near the file cabinets stepped forward and Veronica found herself eye to eye with a woman she had last seen while being interrogated in Sheriff Lamb's office about the disappearance of Duncan Kane and the abduction of Faith Manning, aka Lilly Kane.

"Veronica Mars." Morris said in that unforgettable smooth, low voice. "So they actually let you in to the bureau. Will wonders never cease."

Veronica's eyes narrowed and she said "Of all the section chiefs' offices in all the world…you had to walk into mine. How are you, Special Agent Morris? How's your partner? Is the good Wills still hunting? I thought you retired years ago."

"I see you haven't outgrown your snotty attitude." Morris sighed.

"I prefer to think I've grown into it."

"You continue to convince me that the Bureau's hiring standards have deteriorated sadly since I joined." Morris shook her head.

"I'm sure standards have changed a bit since the…Reagan administration, was it?"

"You're funny." Morris said without a hint of humor. "I remember how funny you were."

"As I recall, you were a bucket of laughs, yourself."

Larson's eyebrows rose during this interchange, which was uttered in the friendliest possible manner.

"Special Agent Morris is here to talk to you about an open case," Larson told Veronica, "a kidnapping in which you are a material witness, Mars."

"Duncan Kane and Faith Manning." Veronica nodded. "Special Agent Morris already knows everything I know about the situation. Although, I suppose forgetfulness isn't uncommon at her age..."

"Recent events have caused me to go back over my case notes." Morris said coolly. "You're not the only witness I'm re-interviewing."

"I hope you didn't go very far out of your way to hear that I still don't know anything." Veronica said.

"That's enough." Larson ordered. "Sit down, both of you."

Veronica immediately slid into one of the chairs in front of her section chief's desk. Morris stood for just a moment before gracefully easing herself into the other. She smiled at Larson. It was the sort of smile that goes nowhere near the eyes.

"I would have classified Ms. Mars here as a hostile witness in court." She told Larson. "I expected as much from a girl with her reputation. I expect something else from a Special Agent with the FBI."

"You treated me like a suspect." Veronica defended herself. "You accused me of aiding and abetting. I was a kid and you tried to bully me into confessing to a crime I knew nothing about!"

"We know all about Agent Mars participation in that old case," Larson told Morris. "I agreed to let you talk to her as a professional courtesy. I can see that I was right in insisting that the interview take place in my office. Keep it professional, Agents, or I'll censure you both."

"I'm always professional, Section Chief Larson." Morris said, never taking her eyes off Veronica. Veronica just rolled her eyes.

"What recent events have changed the circumstances of the case?" Veronica asked in as neutral a voice as she could muster.

"I'll ask the questions, if you don't mind." Morris said in an equally neutral voice. Then she fixed Veronica with her steely gaze and said nothing.

Veronica stared right back at her.

Larson sighed inwardly, knowing exactly how far those intimidation techniques would get Morris with Mars. After nearly a minute of this, he'd had enough. "Agent Morris, if you didn't have anything to ask my agent, she has a lot of work to do..."

"When was the last time you had contact with Duncan Kane?" Morris asked Veronica as though the Section Chief hadn't spoken.

"Same as the last time you asked me that question." Veronica answered. "I haven't seen, heard or had any contact whatsoever with Duncan Kane since we broke up two days before he disappeared, allegedly with the infant, Faith Manning."

"In the ensuing years you haven't received any cryptic, unsigned letters or postcards, no emails of unknown origin, no suspicious strangers trying to 'friend' you on Facebook?"

"No, no and no."

"How about Twitter?" Morris asked. "Have you received any messages of a suspicious nature in a twitter?"

"Ashton Kutcher has over a million followers on Twitter," Veronica pointed out "Why don't you ask him?"

"I'm asking you."

"I don't tweet."

"You're saying you no longer have any connection to Duncan Kane?" Morris asked.

"Yes."

"What's your relationship with Jake and Celeste Kane?" Morris questioned.

"Nonexistent."

"What was your relationship with them at the time of their son's disappearance?" Morris specified.

"Complicated." Veronica answered tersely. _How else to describe one's relationship with a couple who thinks you may be her worst nightmare and his bastard daughter? One sees you as a reminder of everything that's wrong in her life, the girl who could never be good enough for her son, the other sees you as a reminder of lost love, scandal, a purveyor of industrial espionage, blackmail and finally an uneasy truce. _

"You can do better than that, Agent Mars." Morris insisted with a cold smile.

"Acrimonious."

"How so?"

"Celeste Kane never thought I was good enough to date her son and Jake…tolerated me. Less so, after my father and I proved that they obstructed the investigation of their daughter's murder."

"Hmm." Morris was naturally well acquainted with all the details about the Kanes trial at the time of Duncan's disappearance. "You have an acrimonious relationship with the Kanes, yet you've invested heavily in Kane Software." She consulted her notebook. "To the tune of 100,000 added shares this year."

Larson's eyebrows inched up at that. He knew Mars had married money but it was still mind boggling to hear the numbers. Kane Software was currently trading at around $187.53 a share.

"I have nothing to do with the way my husband invests _his_ money." Veronica pointed out.

"Nothing?" Morris acted surprised. "Isn't it true that your husband put all his assets in _your_ name last spring?"

Veronica set her jaw. The contents of the hated prenuptial agreement Logan had insisted upon were not a matter of public record. Unless and until such a time as Veronica filed for divorce, it never would be. Morris had no business knowing about it. It did nothing for Veronica's temper that she hated the prenup.

"Sort of." She said.

"Sort of?" Morris raised her eyebrows. "Either he did or he didn't, Agent Mars. Which is it?"

"When we got married, my husband took my name. Therefore the assets are all in _our_ name."

"Your husband, _Logan Echolls_." Morris clearly thought she would score a point with that but her expression betrayed no disappointment in the non reaction from Veronica or Larson.

"Yes." Veronica merely nodded, bored.

"You're saying he invested that amount in a company that is owned and operated by a man with whom his wife, _whose name he took upon marrying_, has an 'acrimonious relationship'? That's what you're saying?"

"My personal relationship with the Kane's has been over for years." Veronica said. "It has no bearing on the investment value of the company."

"Doesn't it?"

"It's business." Veronica answered.

"Have you ever been to the Eastern shores of Australia?" Morris asked, suddenly changing tactics.

"Yes." Veronica frowned.

"How often do you visit there?"

"I've been there once."

"Only once."

"You can check my passport."

"Oh, I have Agent Mars." Morris said in a vaguely threatening way. "I have."

"Then you know I've only been there once."

"The real question is _why_ did you go there, Agent Mars?"

"What in the world does that have to do with the disappearance of my high school ex?"

"Just answer the question, Agent Mars." Morris smiled that cold reptilian smile again.

"I was on my Honeymoon."

"And who were you with, Agent Mars?"

"My dad and a few girl friends."

"Really?"

"NO. Who do you _think_ was with me on my Honeymoon?"

"Mr. Logan Echolls." Morris repeated slowly. "He and Duncan Kane weren't merely friends; they were best friends and in fact, roommates at the time of the abduction, were they not?"

"Isn't that why you questioned him repeatedly at the time?" Veronica pointed out.

"So you acknowledge their relationship at the time of the abduction?"

"Yes."

"Convenient, isn't it? That the one should disappear without a trace and then you marry the other?"

"You got me." Veronica admitted. "It was convenient that my boyfriend knocked up a different girl, kept it a secret, kidnapped the baby and disappeared, clearing the way for me to marry his best friend, four years later. So much cleaner that way than just to break up…oh wait, _we did break up_!"

"Do you think it's usual for a Honeymooning couple to come home four days early?" Morris ignored Veronica's sarcasm as she changed direction.

"I have no idea what's usual for Honeymooning couples." Veronica admitted.

"You had plans to remain in Mollymook for two weeks, yet you left after only ten days. Why is that?"

"Are you serious?" Veronica frowned.

"Serious enough to make a federal case out of it." Morris answered.

"It's none of your business why we left Australia early."

"Answer the question, Agent Mars." Morris repeated.

"No."

"_Answer the question_." Morris pressed. Veronica merely raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms.

"ANSWER THE QUESTION!" Morris shouted. Veronica's expression didn't change but Larson's did.

"That's enough, Agent Morris!" he snapped. "What could the details of Agent Mars' Honeymoon _possibly_ have to do with an open kidnapping case which occurred while she and her future husband were still in high school?"

"Chief Larson, with all due respect, I agreed to conduct this interrogation in your presence but I didn't agree to allow you to direct me in how to conduct it." Morris said, coldly.

"Interrogation?" Larson asked. "You said you had a few questions for my agent."

"I didn't expect to encounter such hostility from Agent Mars, sir."

"This isn't hostile." Veronica scoffed. "You've never _seen_ me hostile."

"That's enough Agent Mars." Larson cut his eyes to the rookie. "Answer the question."

"Which question, sir?" Veronica asked sweetly.

"Why did you and your husband cut your Honeymoon short?" Morris asked her.

"You've been misinformed." Veronica said. "We did no such thing."

"You checked out of your beach front unit four days before scheduled!" Morris said.

"So?"

"Why?"

"The bed was lumpy."

"Where did you go from there?"

"We went back to Hawaii." Veronica told her. Morris raised her eyebrows skeptically, prompting Veronica to ask, "Are you suggesting that Honeymooning in Hawaii now constitutes suspicious behavior?"

"What made you choose Australia for your Honeymoon?" Morris asked, her voice low and calm again.

"Sixteen thousand miles of beaches." Veronica answered.

"Mm hmm." Agent Morris nodded, as though Veronica had confirmed her suspicions. "Your husband, _Logan Echolls_, likes to surf, doesn't he?"

"Yes."

"Duncan Kane likes to surf." Morris smirked.

"Does he?" Veronica asked.

"Doesn't he?" Morris snapped.

"I don't know." Veronica replied. "He did when he was in school but that was a long time ago."

Morris glared at the younger Agent for a long drawn out moment.

"Agent Morris," Larson sighed, "What exactly do you think Agent Mars knows?"

"I think Agent Mars helped Duncan Kane skip the country in 2006." Morris looked at Larson for the first time since sitting down. "I think she aided and abetted the kidnapping of Faith Manning. I think she knows where the fugitive Duncan Kane has been for the past four years, I think they've been in contact and I think she used the pretext of her Honeymoon as a cover to meet with him."

There was a brief silence in the office as her words hung in the air.

"Do you think it's _usual_ for a Honeymooning couple to track down and meet with their exes?" Veronica finally asked. "You must have had the worst Honeymoon _ever_."

"I'm not married." Morris said dismissively.

"What a shock."

"Are you saying that Duncan Kane has been in Australia these past four years?" Larson asked, ignoring his agent's commentary.

"I didn't say that." Morris hedged.

"Then what in Hell are you talking about?" The Section Chief demanded.

"We have reason to believe he may have been in that hemisphere earlier this year."

"Last spring, when Agent Mars was on her Honeymoon?" Larson asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Are you suggesting that she and/or her husband met Kane there?"

"They're both surfers, sir." Morris insisted.

"Did I mention _sixteen thousand_ miles of beach?" Veronica asked, incredulous. "That's not a needle in a haystack; that's a needle in a pile of needles the size of Mt. Everest!"

"That's what you'd like us to think, isn't it Agent Mars?" Morris sneered.

"Agent Morris, if you think I was glad that Duncan took that baby away from the Mannings when she was an infant, you're right." Veronica said. "I knew then and I still believe today that that child is immeasurably better off with her father than she would have been with anyone else. I made no pretense of hoping that you'd find him. I helped you as much as I could back then because you and my father made it very clear that if I didn't, it would bring more trouble down on me than I could ever get out from under."

"If I ever find proof that you obstructed…" Morris threatened.

"It's been four years, have you found any yet?" Veronica cut her off. "Don't you think you would have, if it existed? Do you even realize what kind of incompetence you're admitting to?"

"I admit to nothing." Morris sniffed.

"I was eighteen years old when that baby was born." Veronica went on. "And you think I outsmarted the entire FBI. I'd be flattered if it weren't so sad."

"You outsmarted no one!" Morris said, indignantly.

"That's right." Veronica nodded. "I didn't. In four years you're no closer to finding her than you were in the first twelve hours after they disappeared. If you think the suspicion that two young men may have both been in Australia at the beginning of the surf season in the southern hemisphere means anything, then you're really grasping at straws."

"It's a pretty convenient coincidence." Morris insisted.

"You keep saying that word. I don't think it means what you think it means." Veronica sighed. "This case is going to haunt your entire career, isn't it?"

"Worry about your own career, Agent Mars." Morris retorted.

"Are we done here, sir?" Veronica snapped her eyes to Section Chief Larson.

"Do you have any other questions for Agent Mars, Agent Morris?" Larson asked.

"No sir." Morris smirked. "I've got all I came for."

"You can go, Mars." Larson said curtly.

"Agent Mars," Morris said as Veronica stood. "Don't leave town."

Veronica left the office without a look back. Outside the door, she drew a deep breath.

_What the hell was that all about?_

She didn't know whether to be angry at Agent Morris' ridiculous assertions, anxious that there seemed to be new evidence in Duncan's kidnapping case, relieved that they still had nothing to connect her to the disappearance or just plain confused about the entire situation.

Veronica really, really hated feeling confused so she chose anger.

* * *

Logan had skipped the lake that morning. The thought of missing out on eight to ten foot swells up on Lake Superior had ruined his appetite for wind surfing the local lakes. He had spent an hour in the gym, then come straight to his office to work.

About mid morning, movement caught his eye and he turned to look out the large window to the back yard. He watched Veronica's Audi pulling up in the drive and his tiny wife explode out of her car like a snake from a can of peanuts. She didn't look happy.

He went out to meet her as she slammed into the kitchen.

"Pack your bag, Surfer Boy; we're going to Duluth!" she said with a smile that threw sparks.

* * *

Several hours later, Veronica sat on the Veranda at Fitger's Hotel, sipping a cup of tea and enjoying the afternoon sunshine glinting off the waves of Lake Superior. Despite the sun, she was bundled up in a thick fleece jacket as the wind coming across the water made the lake side of the hotel ten degrees cooler than the street side.

Duluth was not a disappointment. Typical West Coasters, they had joked about the 'San Francisco of the Midwest' as though it were an oxymoron like 'jumbo shrimp' but their first sight of the old shipping port proved that they had suffered from a lack of imagination. They came over the hills and there it was, shining on the bluffs over the wide blue horizon of the greatest of the Great Lakes.

Duluth had been built by big money and it showed in the mansions that climbed up the cliffs above the lake. Tier after tier of beautiful, ornate, Victorian homes lined the terraced bluffs, each succeeding block rising above the rooftops of its neighbors like stadium theater seating, providing everyone in town a panoramic view of the fresh water sea. The wooden castles weren't as colorful as San Francisco's painted ladies but what they lacked in whimsy they more than made up for in elegance. Front porches, towers, turrets and widows' walks adorned the enormous homes facing the lake like the monoliths of Easter Island. Unlike San Francisco, Duluth was covered with trees and packed with green spaces, now a little more than a week past its Autumn peak. The city was a tapestry of muted mauve, gold, rust and soft heathers.

Despite the fiercely blue sky, the lake looked like beaten pewter. The late storm could barely be seen as a dark smudge against the eastern horizon but the proof of its passing was in the choppy surface of the water, covered with eight to ten foot swells, frothing white as they broke near the shore.

Logan had hooted in excitement at the sight.

He had waited only as long as it took them to check into their room before he hauled his gear to the beach, donned his wet suit and took out his long board for the first time since their honeymoon in Hawaii.

He wasn't alone; Minnesota surfers are a very hearty strain of the species. Frigid air and water temperatures hovering just above freezing are no detriment to those who love the sport. Modern technology has made it possible to withstand the temperatures and brave the harshest of elements. The water off the beaches of Duluth was dotted with surfers, with and without sails.

The waves and wind were such that the wind surfers were able to grab several feet of air off the largest breakers. Logan could see how much fun they were having but he didn't miss his sail; he had come to enjoy the sport he'd grown up with; it felt great to be riding a curl, hands free again.

* * *

They had been halfway to Duluth before Veronica explained her change of heart. Running off to Lake Superior was her way of flipping off Agent Morris.

"I knew they were never going to stop hunting Duncan," She said, shaking her head. "But after all this time, I can't imagine why they'd come back at me. I need to find out what's changed with the state of the investigation."

"Do you think they're going to want to interview me again?" Logan asked, his forehead creased.

"I don't know." She shrugged. "I doubt it; after your initial interview, they pretty much wrote off the idea that you knew anything."

"Because I didn't. Dude went up in a puff of smoke without so much as a 'see ya'. _You're_ the one they suspected of smuggling him over the border."

"Yeah." Veronica sighed.

"You don't think they've figured out how you did it, do you?" Logan asked, worried.

"No." Veronica chuffed at the idea. The only people who knew how they had done it were either implicated, dead or sitting beside her in the car. "This was clearly another fishing expedition. I shouldn't have let it upset me."

"Why did it upset you so much?" Logan asked, a part of him still afraid of the answer.

"I think…" Veronica answered, shaking her head, "I was just _so pissed_ that the meeting wasn't about OCB."

She was looking out her window so she didn't see the look of immense relief on Logan's face as his features relaxed into a grin. It had _not_ been the memory of Duncan that upset her.

"Fuck OCB!" he chirped, as a matter of habit. "And fuck Agent Morris; let's have some fun."

* * *

Veronica was enjoying herself as she sat in the brisk autumn air, her laptop on the table in front of her as she sipped her tea and entered Duncan Kane's name into the FBI data base. She may have been more upset by disappointment in the silence of OCB than the memory of Duncan's departure but she still wasn't going to allow Agent Morris to barge in and out of her life without giving up some information.

She hadn't followed the progress of Duncan's case since she joined the bureau. It never occurred to her to do so. Despite herself, she was impressed by the doggedness of Agent Morris's search. The woman had worked three other kidnapping cases in the four and a half years since Duncan had vanished but despite the coldness of the trail, had never stopped adding bits and pieces to her file on Duncan. From what Veronica found in the official file, it had been nothing more than reported sightings and an ongoing surveillance of Jake and Celeste's activities from where and when they vacationed to every financial move they made.

Veronica grinned. The feds might never find Duncan but if Jake or Celeste Kane ever strayed from the straight and narrow, the treasury department would come down on the software moguls like a ton of bricks thanks to the constant scrutiny their son's disappearance had caused. That couldn't have happened to a nicer couple.

Then she frowned. She and Logan were heavily invested in Kane Software. The merest whiff of shadiness in Jake Kane's business dealings could have an adverse impact on their fortune. As much as it pleased her to imagine either of the Kanes being perp walked on the nightly news, she wasn't sure it was worth millions to her to see it.

Then she shrugged. The fact that Jake Kane had managed to keep out of jail this long meant he probably knew what he was doing.

To her surprise, there was nothing in the file indicating that Duncan had been sighted in Australia the previous spring.

Veronica almost felt a twinge of sympathy for Agent Morris; clearly the woman had hit a dead end in the case and had gone back to square one.

_Couldn't have happened to a nicer agent._

* * *

Later on, dressed for dinner, Logan regaled Veronica with his adventure on the waves as they went down to the lobby.

Veronica was smiling more at her husband's enthusiasm in describing the water than listening to the details of a sport she didn't understand when her eye was caught by a marquee in the lobby. She grabbed Logan's arm and pointed.

"Look at that!" she exclaimed.

The large, colorful poster advertized the Opening Reception to be held the following night for a show featuring several artists of national renown, right there in the banquet hall of Fitger's.

"Huh." Was Logan's eloquent return.

"Are you going to tell me you didn't know about this?" she cocked her head at him.

"Serendipity!" He shrugged.

They went on down to the Brewhouse for dinner. As soon as they were seated, Veronica pulled out her phone and called Johnson, telling him about the show. He agreed that it was a good idea to get up to Duluth, as the more shows and auctions she attended, the better it would be for her investigation.

"It's official!" she grinned at Logan as she dropped her purse back into her bag. "I'm here on business."

"Does that mean we can write off dinner?" He asked, perusing the menu. "I don't see lobster."

"I don't think the bureau will pay for Fitger's but if we wanted to go on down to the Super 8, we'd be good."

"No thanks. My patriotism only goes so far." Logan shook his head. "I'm having an elk burger."

* * *

The reception at Fitger's could hardly have been more different from the gala at the Art Institute. Whereas the one had been an exclusive, expensive fund raiser, the other was a celebration of local talent. It was open to all and after chatting with several other attendees, Veronica quickly realized that many, if not most of the folks filling the banquet hall of the old hotel were friends and family members of the artists.

Catered by the hotel, the food and wine was excellent. The banquet hall was well lit but couldn't compete with the exhibit space of the Target Atrium. The three artists whose work was being shown were all local so the place was packed. At first glance it looked like a town picnic had been moved indoors. There was no dress code. Mothers chased kids in and out of the hall. Men and women who had come straight from the office stood beside those who had driven in from the countryside or come in off their fishing boats to see what their favorite artists had produced.

Logan had not expected to be at all impressed by the art for sale.

He didn't know that Minnesota was the epicenter of the remnants of the Boston School; an underground movement in the art world where painters still learn to see, draw and paint like the old masters. Classical Impressionism was alive and well and Two Harbors, Minnesota, thirty miles up the coast from Duluth, was one of its strongholds.

The three local artists whose work was being shown that night were all graduates of the Atelier system; all were students of the great Richard Lack. These three were all members of the society from which Kirk Sorenson had exiled himself and spent his days drinking to forget.

All Logan knew was that for the second time in as many weeks, he felt his Mother's ghost at his shoulder.

The paintings were magnificent.

* * *

"Wow." Veronica said, later as she joined Logan back in their suite. She had stayed behind to see who got what at the silent auction.

"Waste of time?" Logan asked. "That really didn't look like the money laundering or drug running crowd."

"No; too much polyester." She agreed. "Although that old couple in their gardening clothes paid eleven thou for that last painting at the auction! I wouldn't have pegged them as having that kind of money or being art collectors."

"Can't judge a book by its ratty old, stained cover, eh?"

"Guess not." She agreed. "I didn't recognize anyone from the last auction. Everyone used their real names and phone numbers in the silent auction; I got shots of those lists and I'll run them against the Art Institute event just to be sure but I don't expect any overlap."

"No, this stuff wasn't 'important' enough to attract that bunch." Logan sneered. "But the night wasn't a total waste of time; I bought another painting."

"Ooh!" Veronica wasn't even surprised. "Which one?"

"Yellow and Blue." The featured artist had done an entire series of paintings depicting a woman hanging laundry on sundrenched summer days. There had been a half dozen pictures that were studies of sunlight pouring through translucent fabric. In the hands of the artist, simple laundry had become almost unbearably beautiful; mysterious and romantic. Logan had fallen in love with a large oil painting of a slim, blond woman hanging a pale yellow sheet on a clothesline. The simple composition was beautifully rendered and the sunlight filtered though fabric had reminded him of the giant Sorolla he'd fallen in love with years before. "I thought we could hang it in the kitchen; it's homey."

"Perfect!" Veronica said. "Man, being rich is _fun! _I bought one, too!_"_

With that, she uncovered the wrapped canvas she'd outbid all others to win at the silent auction; a 20"X24" oil study of a young boy sitting on a river bank reading a book.

"It's called 'Tom Sawyer'," she told him. "I took one look at it and knew I had to have it."

"Great, we came here to catch waves and bad guys and wound up buying art." Logan said, shaking his head. "No one can accuse us of wasting our time."

"Who knows?" Veronica shrugged. "Maybe when I run the names it'll turn out one of those polyester Pollyanna's will have mob connections. This could turn out to be the best surf trip _ever."_

To be continued...


	36. Chapter 36 Mental Floss

Chapter 36 Mental Floss

Back at home on Sunday afternoon, Logan and Veronica were up in their room, unpacking. Logan threw most of his clothes into the dirty laundry hamper. He wadded up one item and tossed it onto the small trash can near the bed. Recognizing the shorts he'd worn the day before, Veronica asked what was wrong with them.

"Button popped off." He said.

"You don't throw away a perfectly good pair of shorts just because they're missing a button!" she said as she pulled the shorts out of the trash.

"They're _not_ perfectly good." Logan explained. "Without a button, they're perfectly _useless_."

Veronica just shook her head and opened the drawer on her bedside table, taking out her emergency repair kit. Reattaching buttons and repairing torn hemlines were only two of the survival skills she had acquired since her mother had abandoned her back in high school. She doubted if Logan even knew that there was a spare button sewn into the shorts for just such an occurance. She snipped it out and threaded her needle and began to stitch, wondering what it would have been like, growing up in a world of disposable clothes.

* * *

Logan bounced on downstairs to see how JR had managed hanging the new paintings.

"Nice!" he nodded with approval, seeing the large canvas in the dining room.

"Yeah, it's a beautiful painting." JR said. "You don't think it's a bit personal for the kitchen?"

"It's a chick hanging laundry." Logan shrugged. JR peered at him, his eyes narrowed speculatively. "What?"

"Have you ever known anyone who did that?" JR pointed at the painting.

"Lots of people do laundry." Logan protested. "Probably."

"Yeah, just not any of the people you've ever known." JR said.

"It's a chick hanging laundry!" Logan repeated.

"It's more than that! It's a moment in time; early in the morning of a summer day, not a cloud in the sky. There's a lovely young woman, looking content to be doing homey chores."

"So what's your point?" Logan frowned.

"This painting is the embodiment of the perfect home life you've always wanted and never thought you would have." JR said, animatedly. "It captures the breathtaking beauty of ordinary life!"

Logan stared at him for a moment, his upper lip curled in an expression of distaste.

"I hate it when you try to psychoanalyze me." He said.

"I know." JR admitted. "That's what makes it so much fun."

"I like it because she looks like Veronica." Logan nodded at the blonde in the painting. Then he left JR standing there and went to get some ice water out of the refrigerator.

"Huh." JR muttered, squinting at the canvas. "She does kinda look like Mars."

* * *

"Oh. Yes. That's _perfect_." Veronica said happily, as JR hung the painting she had brought home from Duluth in the library.

JR stepped back and looked at the picture of a shirtless boy reading on the bank of a river.

"Wow." He said. "I'm amazed by how he got the water so simply and yet so…"

"Me too." Veronica knew exactly what JR meant. "You can practically hear it bubbling over the rocks. I knew I had to have this one the second I saw it. It's called Tom Sawyer. At first, you might think the title refers to the boy, alone but at home in the woods by the river but then you notice; he's reading a book and not just any book; the Great American Novel. It's like; what everyone wishes their childhood summers had been. It's a world that's so safe that kids can just take off on their own into the woods. There's no danger lurking in those trees; he's as secure as if he were in his own room. It's the ideal childhood. I love it!"

"Let me guess;" JR said dryly, "he looks like Logan did when he was a kid."

"Only if you switched out the woods for a mansion, the creek for a swimming pool, the rocks for a chaise lounge and the book for an issue of Hustler magazine." She raised an eyebrow. "Come on, Jeff. I'm a little more complex than _that_."

* * *

The three days spent surfing Lake Superior had invigorated Logan. Monday morning, he immersed himself in work; he had been writing for several hours when he was disturbed by his cell phone.

Seeing Dick's name on the display, he picked up.

"Pretty early in the day for drunk dialing, Casablancas." He said.

"Dude, are you okay?" Dick asked.

"Uh…I'm fine. Why?"

"Oh man." Dick sounded agitated and Dick never let anything agitate him. "It's your sister."

"What happened to Trina?" Logan was surprised by the cold jolt that ran down his spine at the thought that something had happened to his older sister.

"She's fine, dude. She's _everywhere_."

"What do you mean?" Logan demanded, relieved.

"I can't turn on the TV, go online or walk past a magazine rack without seeing her stupid face!" Dick exclaimed. "It's like she's stalking me. I figured if she was driving _me_ nuts, she must be making _you_ howl like a monkey!"

"No howling around here." Logan assured him. "Are you saying her show is a hit?"

"A hit? It's all anyone's talking about. She was on The View this morning!"

"The View?" Logan could hardly believe his good luck. A warm, unfamiliar feeling flooded his being.

"Dude. That is _not_ what I want to see when I'm eating breakfast."

"So turn the channel."

"Mel loves that shit." Dick sighed. "So how are things in Mindeanola?"

"I have no idea."

"Surf's rising." Dick informed him. "When you coming back here to catch some waves with me?"

"Soon." Logan assured him. The trip to Duluth had whetted his appetite for surfing. He liked wind surfing but he hadn't realized how much he missed the big waves until the opportunity of surfing the Great Lake had come up.

After he'd finished talking to Dick, Logan steeled himself for a call he never thought he'd make.

"LOGAN!" Trina's voice pierced his eardrum. "You little shit, I've been trying to get a hold of you for _weeks._ That number you gave me didn't work!"

"I know, sorry about that." He said, insincerely.

"No you're not." Trina sounded delighted to have caught him in a lie. "You can always get me but I can never get you. What's up with that?"

"I don't know. Hey, look; word has made it out to the raggedy edge that your show's a hit. Congratulations."

"You are so sweet! It is a hit! _I'm _a hit!" she crooned. "They can't get enough of me. I'm Brilliant!"

"I heard you did The View."

"Oh, those gals are so sweet; they just loved me! Do you get The View where you are? Wherever that is?"

"I don't know."

"You can probably see my View on Youtube."

"Thank God!"

"Oh stop. And you can relax, Yogi. I've been doing interviews and spreads for _weeks _now and I haven't mentioned you even once since you asked me not to."

"I knew you could keep it all about you if you just put your mind to it."

"Snotty little prick." She said, affectionately. "You're going to have to start treating me with a little more respect; I _own _this town."

"But I'm not in that town." He couldn't resist taunting her.

"You wouldn't believe it if you were here!" Trina launched into a long, excited recital of all the people clamoring for her attention, photos, interviews… in short, she was living out the exact dream she'd had since she was old enough to sit up. "Who would have guessed it, Yogi? Turns out I was wasting my time with all those medical and cop dramas; I was born to play comedy!"

"Which is really strange since you're not funny." Logan pointed out enthusiastically.

"I don't have to be!" Trina said, happily. "The writers are funny for me! Turns out all those years of listening to you have honed my timing to perfection!"

"Glad to have been of service."

"You've been more useful than you even know. It seems that rumor I started about you maybe doing a guest spot generated enough buzz to get everyone's attention. We were the hottest new show of the season before we even aired. Then, turns out, we're really funny! After two episodes our ratings were fantastic and no one even remembers that old rumor!"

"Sounds like you're finally getting everything you ever wanted." Logan said, feeling very weird about that.

"Not everything." Trina said. "But I_ will_ if you promise to be my date to at least one event during awards season."

"No." Logan's knee jerk reaction had nothing to do with Trina; it was the flashback to the summer before senior year when he'd been hounded by press and photographers as an accused killer but Trina couldn't know that. She hadn't been in Neptune when all that happened and she had never really given her little brother's travails any thought. It had never occurred to her that infamy was a different experience than fame. All she heard was the loathing in her brother's voice. There was a long pause on the line after his terse refusal.

"Logan, why do you hate me?" she finally asked.

"I thought you were done with melodrama." Logan replied impatiently. "I don't hate you. I just can't get all warm and fuzzy over someone who told the world I was a liar."

"I never called you a liar." She said petulantly.

"You referred to me as 'A kid with an over active imagination and an acute sense of personal drama.' People knew what you meant."

"That's not the same thing at all! You _do_ have a wild imagination and you always were very self protective—"

"He beat the shit out of me, Trina!" He cut her off. "He did it all the time!"

"He accidently broke your nose, _once_."

"It wasn't an accident and you only _saw him do_ _it_ once!" He shouted into the phone. "I may have an active imagination but I have a firm grip on reality and I didn't _imagine_ all the scars and bruises did I? And I never _fell down the stairs_ in my life!"

"Ugh, you mean that time you broke your arm?"

"Collar bone." Logan corrected her with the impatience of one who has been making the same correction for years.

"What, I suppose he pushed you?" she asked sarcastically.

"NO he didn't _push_ me." Logan took a deep breath. "HE THREW ME."

Logan seethed through another long pause on the phone. He thought perhaps his sister had hung up on him and was about to end the call when he heard a small sound.

"oh god." Trina's voice was barely more than a whisper. "That happened the day you wrecked my bike, didn't it?"

"yeah."

Logan had been seven when Trina had gotten a beautiful, high tech, twenty-one speed bicycle for her thirteenth birthday. He had been fascinated by the bike and as soon as Trina wasn't looking, had tried to ride it down the driveway. He'd been way too small for it, lost control and hit the stone wall which had made short work of the bike's lightweight frame. Trina had found him, scraped, bleeding and enraged, kicking her mangled new bike and naturally, she had freaked out. No thirteen year old girl on earth would give her seven year old brother a thought under the circumstances and she hadn't. She'd taken one look at the bent frame and run screaming and crying to her parents.

She had grown up hero worshipping her Daddy. She thought he was the smartest, strongest, bravest, most handsome man on earth. There was nothing unusual in that; most little girls feel that way about their daddies. The difference was that the rest of the world agreed with Trina. Everywhere they went, people adored him; every magazine cover, every movie poster, every televised puff piece reinforced Trina's vision of Aaron the Magnificent. No whiny brat of a little brother telling ridiculous stories could compete with that.

For some reason, the memory of her bicycle and her brother with his arm in a sling jogged another, even less pleasant memory; the way Aaron had dealt with that asshole, Dylan Goran, at that fiasco of a dinner meeting. That had been the only time Trina had ever seen her father like that. Aaron had always been Trina's champion. He went berserk at the thought of anyone hurting her. Five years after her father's death, she was finally able to connect certain events from her past and for the first time; it crossed her mind to wonder what defense a seven year old boy would have had against such fury.

Or a seventeen year old girl.

Trina shuddered.

"Jesus Christ." She breathed into the phone. "He…_Jesus Christ_."

"Hey Trine, I'm sorry." Logan sighed. He wished he'd shut his stupid mouth right after 'congratulations'. "I didn't call you up to yell at you…I don't hate you, I—"

"I gotta go, Logan." Trina cut him off, sounding distracted. "I gotta go."

The line went dead.

Logan looked at his phone, feeling like a complete asshat.

"That went well." He sighed. Then he dialed another number.

"Hey kid," Charlie answered, "what's up?"

"Oh. I was going to leave you a message." Logan said, surprised that his older brother had answered. "Aren't you in class?"

"Your timing is perfect; you caught me while I've got a free period. What's so important that you had to hear my voice? Usually all I get are emails and texts."

"I just called Trina to congratulate her on her show being a hit."

"_You_ called _her_?" Charlie was impressed. He knew all about the problematic relationship between his biological half brother and sister. In fact, while he and Logan had become fairly close in the past four years, which was practically a miracle considering how they found out about each other and the way Logan had outed Charlie, Trina refused to acknowledge Charlie at all. She said that since he was merely an illegitimate half brother and she was adopted, he was no relation at all. This made no sense but neither did any of Trina's other positions. Regardless of that, Charlie had been a tireless champion of the idea that Logan should do whatever he could to maintain the relationship. He thought it was stupid to discard family, no matter how ditzy a sister she was and from what Logan had told him he was convinced that Trina didn't have a malicious bone in her body. She may be self centered and spoiled but Charlie was convinced that she really did love her younger brother. So he was pleased to hear that Logan had reached out to Trina. "Good for you!"

"Not so good." Logan sighed. "Two minutes into the conversation, I was ripping her head off."

"Oh." Charlie groaned. "What _is wrong_ with you?"

"I don't know. Apparently the depths of my rage are deeper than I knew."

"Look, you had every right to be pissed off but it's over. It's done. Let it go."

"So far, no good."

"Sack up, kid." Charlie had very little sympathy for the trials and tribulations of having grown up Aaron Echolls' acknowledged son and heir. His hard headed honesty was one of the reasons Logan liked him so much. The last thing Logan wanted was someone to feel sorry for him. "What good does all that anger do you now? If Aaron was still alive and there was a chance you could beat the shit out of him, then it might come in handy but since he's not, just _get over_ it."

"Easy for you to say!" Logan protested.

"What, you think I was never angry?" Charlie asked. "He knocked up my Mom and then bought us off. He paid her to go away and so I was left to grow up fatherless. When you're a kid, you don't look at life logically and realize you're probably much better off without the asshole who treats his offspring like an embarrassing secret anymore than you think of your mom as the most expensive piece of ass he ever tapped. You just want a dad; like other kids."

"Did you just refer to your Mom as a piece of ass?" Logan laughed.

"Only to illustrate the point that you can't blame your sister for what happened to you if you won't even blame your mother."

"_What_?"

"Trina was just another kid growing up in that house. What you have is an extreme but classic case of sibling rivalry, which she won, hands down. She was Aaron's princess and you were his whipping boy. But what about Lynn?"

"What about her?" Logan demanded. He got very defensive when anyone criticized his mom. "She hated him, too."

"If she had loved him to distraction she would have had at least a lame excuse for not protecting her son but you say she hated him, so the fact that she didn't take you and high tail it the first time he laid a hand on you is disgraceful." Charlie ignored Logan's indignant sputter and charged on. "I know you loved your mom and I believe that she loved you but it's a pretty shabby love that stands by during that kind of abuse."

"It killed her!"

"She killed herself, Logan." Charlie said, bluntly. "Your mother was not a passive observer in her life. She chose Aaron, she chose to stay, she sacrificed you and when it got to be too much she jumped off a bridge. The Lynn Echolls' story doesn't have much a heroine."

"Fuck you." There was no force behind Logan's curse. He and Charlie had had this conversation before and it was getting harder all the time to take up his mother's cause.

"She was a shitty mother to you, the son of her own body. What kind of a mother do you think she was to Trina? What was Trina, four years old when her Dad married Lynn? Do you think she was overjoyed to be sharing her hero with another woman? Do you think Lynn went out of her way to make Trina feel safe, secure and loved? Trina knew she was adopted; an outsider. Do you know what a four year old calls the woman who marries her father? An Evilstepmother. That's one word, emphasis on 'evil'. Trina probably thought that if she pissed Lynn off, she'd wind up locked in a tower or living as an indentured maid somewhere."

"You don't know Trina." Logan interrupted with at snort. "She would have _loved_ the idea of being persecuted."

"At four? She would have been terrified because she would have believed it. My guess is that Aaron overcompensated with Trina and he never stopped. I'm no shrink but—"

"Fuck no; trained therapists are supposed to be non judgmental!"

"Hey, you want no judgment, call someone else. The yellow pages are full of licensed professionals who will hold your hand and pass no judgment. At $300.00 an hour, they'll let you wallow for the rest of your life. You called me because you know that even if I'm wrong, I won't tell you lies you want to hear."

"It must be awesome to always be the smartest guy in the room." Logan spat, sarcastically.

"It must suck to always be the angriest guy in the room." Charlie was unfazed.

"Fuck you again!"

"Oh, good point." Charlie said pleasantly. "I take it all back."

At that, Logan began to laugh, despite himself. Like Veronica, Charlie was always able to get him to see the ridiculous side of himself. There had been very few others who had ever dared to do such a thing. Logan never thought about it, but it was one of the things he had valued most about Duncan. Since Lilly's death, Duncan had been too medicated and traumatized himself to retain the knack and Logan had missed it. It was one of his favorite things about his brother.

"Fine." He grunted. "What were you gonna say?"

"Your trouble with Aaron probably began the day you were born. Babies think their mom's are the sun and stars and dad's are just the extra grownup. A narcissist of the magnitude of Aaron Echolls would have resented the hell out of that even if you were his own son. As if that weren't bad enough, you probably hogged the spotlight that Lynn had previously reserved for only him, which wouldn't have endeared you to him. And you know; the fact that he was a violent psychopath probably didn't help. That's not Trina's fault any more than it was your fault that you couldn't stay out of his crosshairs. It was all on your parents, Logan; they were the adults."

"You don't know what it was like. My Mom was a victim, too."

"Logan," Charlie sighed, "Lynn may have been a dear, sweet, lovely and gracious woman but the fact remains; she didn't protect her son. You should stop blaming Trina for that. Okay, you're going to hate my next question but give it some serious thought anyway; How do you feel _right now_?"

"Like punching you in the face." Logan answered immediately. "You're lucky you're not here."

"We're both lucky I'm not there." Charlie grinned, not the least impressed by his younger brother's violent rhetoric. "I don't mean in a 'Kumbaya, how does it make you feel' way. I mean; are you _happy_ at this moment?"

"I'd be a lot happier if my hands were around your throat."

"Really? _My_ throat, or Trina's? Or Aaron's?"

"Aaron's dead." Logan muttered.

"And rotting in his grave." Charlie nodded. "Just think how ugly his corpse must be by now."

"Sexiest man alive, all corpsified and gross." Logan laughed. "Now that his face matches his soul, we should dig him up and show the world! Man, he'd hate that."

"You know what else he'd probably hate? You and Trina, happy without him. You called 'cuz you feel like shit, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"He'd love that."

"I don't know what to do…" Logan sighed. "I don't even know if I want to keep trying. It always ends in a fight."

"What was the fight about this time?"

"I…it…You know, I don't even care that she never believed he knocked me around. That was nothing; but she still doesn't think he killed Lilly! She thinks the acquittal proves he was innocent! She doesn't believe he tried to kill _Veronica_!"

"Maybe she can't. Logan, did you ever wonder what kind of an emotional toll it would take on Trina to look at her father through your eyes? She doesn't have the reserves to handle it; she's not that deep."

"What do you mean?"

"You make it a choice between you or her entire life. Actually, when you take it all into consideration, it's amazing that she still wants to have anything to do with _you_."

"_What?"_

"Come on, Logan! You're the kid who spent his whole life trying to tear down her idol, culminating in the testimony that was supposed to land her hero father on death row. She must love you an awful lot not to hate your guts."

Logan didn't answer.

"Trina's worst sins are that she's lazy and self absorbed." Charlie went on. "From what you've told me, you've put up with much worse character traits in the people in your life."

"You're right. She's practically a saint." Logan muttered sarcastically.

"You're never going to change her. If you want to be able to have a conversation with your sister, which doesn't end with you feeling like shit, you'll have to change your own attitude towards her. Stop expecting her to suddenly see things your way, it's never gonna happen. She is who she is and it's not all bad."

"She..." _picked me up when I couldn't drive. Found me when I'd lost my car. Didn't rat me out when I puked all over hers. Kept them away when I was hungover and sick. "_…had her uses."

"You really can't expect any more than that from a big sister."

"You don't even have any sisters. How do you know all this shit?"

"I work in a high school. And this stuff isn't exactly brain surgery." Charlie laughed. "Look, I gotta go; my free period is over. Apologize to Trina. Stop opening old wounds."

"I doubt if she'll take my call again."

"Send her flowers. Write her a letter. Turn on the charm. You're supposed to be good at that."

* * *

Veronica gave Johnson her report on the auction up in Duluth, then returned to her cubicle to enter all the data into her investigation. As she suspected, nothing connected to what she already had but she was able to enter more buyers and artist's work into the equation. As with any investigation, the more information the better until such a time as one could confidently begin to eliminate possibilities. She was a little disappointed to find that Agent Morris hadn't been foaming at the bit over her leaving town. In fact, no one had seen Morris since she had grilled Veronica. It was assumed that she had returned to the west coast field office whence she'd come.

"I've looked at the case file. She doesn't seem to have anything concrete." Veronica told Tuski and Shep at lunch at the Longfellow Cafe. "I'm beginning to think she just felt like shaking my tree."

"In most abductions, if the victim isn't found within seventy two hours, it doesn't end well." Tuski recited the well known bureau statistics. "This one's been open _nearly five years._ That would be enough to drive me crazy."

"Its been twenty one years since Jacob Wetterling was abducted." Shep remarked. "The guys who worked that one have either moved on or retired but the case is still open. You can't let the losses outweigh the wins."

"That poor kid was eleven when he disappeared." Tuski said. "The only way he's still alive is if he suffered massive head trauma and acute amnesia."

"Smart money says that kid's been dead since the day he vanished." Shep said grimly.

"Well, Agent Morris can relax on one thing," Veronica said firmly. "Faith Manning isn't dead. If fact, being with her father was by far the best option that baby had. Her maternal grandparents were monsters. Meg was terrified that her parents might get custody of her baby."

"Was she?" Tuski asked.

"They were emotionally abusing her little sister, Grace. They kept her in a closet and made her fill notebooks with self incriminating lines. Duncan and I knew about it and the Mannings knew we did. I have reason to believe the Sheriff believed our story but he…was killed before he could find proof. I was upfront with Agent Morris." Veronica said, holding to her official story. "I never wanted them to catch Duncan. Should he have hired a lawyer and sued for custody legally? Sure. But in addition to his health problems, he would have had to fight his own parents as well as the Mannings. How much influence do you think a billion dollars buys in family court? Jake and Celeste Kane couldn't accept that their perfect son had fathered a baby in high school. I know the Kanes; there are no lengths they wouldn't go to if they believed it was in Duncan's best interest, even if it went directly against his own wishes. They obstructed the investigation of _the murder of their own daughter_ to protect him. They would never have let him take on the responsibility of an illegitimate child."

"But that baby is their flesh and blood, too!" Tuski protested.

"That doesn't count for as much as you might think." Veronica said, remembering Jake and Celeste's treatment of her when they believed she was Jake's progeny. "I'm sure they thought he'd get over it. They didn't understand their son at all. What Duncan did was against the law but it wasn't wrong and I've never lost a wink of sleep over it. I'm proud of him for doing right by his daughter."

"With that attitude, you can't really blame Morris for thinking you may have held out on her." Shep said with a shrug. "After all, you were pretty close to both the baby's parents and you didn't hide the fact that you were okay with Duncan taking the baby and running."

"You know, shortly after I found out that he'd knocked up a friend of mine, I caught the town skank naked in his shower and it turned out that wasn't the first time she'd been there!" Veronica pointed out. "What seems more likely to you; that I was fed up with his unfaithfulness but was happy to see him step up to his responsibility or that a high school senior could mastermind an escape to evade the feds? Whatever happened to Occam's Razor?"

"I'd have dumped his cheating ass." Tuski snorted.

"You wanting nothing to do with Duncan and his little bastard, no matter how cute she may have been, does seem the simpler explanation." Shep conceded. "But after all this time, you can't blame an agent for second guessing herself."

"She actually suggested that my _Honeymoon_ was staged as cover for a clandestine meeting with my ex." Veronica shook her head in wonder. "That woman has an imagination!"

"You should have introduced her to your husband," Tuski chortled. "You could have cleared up that little misunderstanding in a heart throb, I mean beat."

"But she must have interviewed him at the time!" Shep pointed out. "I mean; they lived together!"

"She—" Veronica blinked in surprise and looked at Shep. Tuski looked sheepish but Shep just rolled his eyes.

"We're FBI, Mars." He reminded her. "_Of course_ we know who Logan is."

Veronica let out an indignant puff of breath. "Does _everyone_ know?" she asked.

"Don't think so." Shep shrugged. "Why would they care? Look, we get why you'd rather not have it common knowledge; there's a lot of bad shit associated with his name."

"None of which was his fault!" Veronica bristled. "Well, not the really bad stuff, anyway. He was certainly wild but he was _never_ dangerous. Well, not to anyone but himself…and, um…people who really deserved it. He was never _convicted_ of anything. How long have you known?"

"Since the second he bounced into your kitchen." Tuski told her. "Although that house tipped us off that something was up."

"But you never said anything, so we were happy to just go with it." Shep said. "It's your business and you know; so what?"

"Actually," Veronica admitted, "Larson knows. He didn't give me this case just on the strength of Logan's money; he knew Logan's name would get us access to the inner sanctum."

"Well, like I said before," Tuski assured her, "Solve the case and shove it up their ass."

"Are…okay, don't bite my head off but are you absolutely positive that Logan didn't help his buddy escape?" Shep asked.

"Absolutely." Veronica laughed grimly. "At the time, Logan had his hands a little too full, trying to avoid being prosecuted for the murder of Felix Toombs. If your aim is to disappear, you don't ask for the help of someone wearing an ankle monitor. Ironically, that monitor is probably the only thing that kept Logan from being the primary suspect instead of me. Even so, I gave the feds a list of all the properties Logan had access to, in case Duncan was hiding out domestically but they never found any evidence that he had used any of them. Honestly, there's not much that Logan would have enjoyed more than helping Duncan grab that baby and run but under the circumstances, he wouldn't have been any use at all. Duncan wouldn't have gotten very far with Logan's help."

"Is it possible that the two of them have been in contact in the years since then?" Shep asked.

"No." Veronica shook her head. "He'd have told me."

"Would he?" Tuski looked skeptical. "Especially now, that would put you in a pretty tight corner; you'd be legally bound to tell Morris about it."

"Logan was furious with Duncan for leaving without a word." Veronica explained. "If they'd had any contact, he wouldn't still be so angry. He's…not very good at hiding his emotions."

"Really?" Tuski sighed. Veronica and Shep both looked at her. "I…I mean…" she stammered, then rolled her eyes and said "You're a very lucky woman."

"What am I? Mr. Stoneheart?" Shep demanded as Veronica laughed. "I practically had to tap dance on your desk to get you to notice me!"

"Oh, I noticed you." Tuski told him. "We all noticed you; you flirted with everything in the office including the furniture. You just had to learn to focus your attention."

"Can I help it if I'm naturally charming?" Shep demanded.

"That's what they all say," Veronica sighed and pulled out the dessert menu from behind the napkin dispenser. "I need some ice cream."

* * *

Veronica was lying on the couch in the living room that evening, remote in hand, surfing channels hoping for something to catch her attention. Logan sat on the floor in front of her, a stack of note cards in his hand. Each card had a plot point from his book outline on it and he was laying them on the floor, trying out different timelines. Until a few minutes before, he had been down in the gym, working out his issues with the heavy bag and he liked to play with his plotlines while he cooled down before taking a shower. He was wearing sweat pants but no shirt and his sweaty hair stood on end.

Bored by an episode of House Hunters, Veronica let her eyes drift over her husband. A smile played on her lips as she watched him work. He looked like a little kid sorting baseball cards as he concentrated on the order in which he'd placed them, then switched one or two around and chewed on his thumbnail, thinking. He leaned forward to move a card and her eye caught sight of a pale pink line that crossed his shoulder blades. In the dim light of dusk she could barely see them but she knew there were two more faded, broken lines crossing the skin of his back and shoulders.

Reaching out, she lightly traced her finger along one, then leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his shoulder.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"If I didn't know where to look, I couldn't see a scar at all." she said.

"Cut it out." He flinched.

"What?" she frowned, surprised at his reaction.

"Is that what you're doing? Looking for flaws? Look close; I got a ton of 'em." He reached out and grabbed his shirt, pulling it on over his head.

"That's not what I was doing." She said. "I just…I can't forget what happened, Logan."

"I could if you'd let it go." He said, petulantly.

"I don't want to forget." She said. "I can't help remembering once in a while how close I came to losing you. Remembering what we've been through helps me focus on why what I do is important. Every day there are people out there who aren't as lucky as we were."

"You think we were lucky?"

"We survived. Scars are there for a reason. We shouldn't forget."

"Scars, warts, flaws. Whatever."

"Scars are not flaws."

"Well maybe they fade for a reason, too." He looked over his shoulder at her, exasperated. "Bad shit happened. A ton of it. I have no intention of wallowing in the memory for the rest of my life."

"Well, neither do I! I don't start each day consulting a list of all the crap we've been through but sometimes I can't help but remember what your back looked like after—"

"It looked worse than it was." He shook the memory off, impatiently. "It just bled a lot. Believe me it's been—" he stopped.

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Why are you trying to pick a fight with me?" he demanded.

"_What?_ I'm not!" she laughed. "Why are you trying to pick a fight with me?"

"I never have to work that hard." He muttered, going back to his cards.

"Are you just trying to piss me off?" she asked suspiciously. At that, he laughed and turned and put one elbow up on the couch beside her.

"I'm sorry." He said. "It's been a really stupid day. I don't _like_ remembering what happened. And I don't want you feeling bad about it. I don't even like you trying to find Gory. Forget about him."

"I think that's a mistake. When I think about what he did to you—"

"What he did to me? Veronica, you _knee capped_ him. If you haven't been able to find a trace of him in all these years, did it ever occur to you that it may be because he's crippled? On balance, I think we got our pound of flesh."

"That's all the more reason to think he may want revenge." She pointed out.

"I don't think so." He sighed and began to collect his cards in order. "Not unless he's even stupider than I think he is."

"He couldn't be." She agreed. "But he may be a lot more determined than you think."

"I think…" he stopped, staring blankly into space.

"What?" she prompted. He looked at her over his shoulder.

"I think I need to go see Trina."

To be Continued...


	37. Chapter 37 Appearances

Chapter 37 Appearances

Logan and Veronica were lying in bed later that night, talking.

"That would be a great space for the paintings we bought at the Arboretum." Veronica nodded toward the eastern wall of their enormous bedroom. There was a row of high, square windows running the length of the wall, through which they could see stars at the moment but beneath them, the wall had plenty of room for artwork.

"I think we should move the bed over there." Logan said.

"Really. Why?" Veronica felt like the space between the two large windows overlooking the back yard was made for a king sized bed.

"I think I'd like to be able to look out these windows," He hooked his thumb toward the windows beside the bed, "see the back yard from bed, watch the sunset. And I'm not crazy about the morning sun in our face."

"Okay first of all," Veronica enumerated, "we wouldn't be able to see the backyard from way over there, just the tree tops, which is exactly what we see out the front windows now. Second of all, the sun has usually set long before we make it upstairs. Third, by the time the sun is high enough to come through those windows in the morning, its way past time to get up. Fourth, if the bed were against that wall, we'd have to go around it to get to the closet and finally, the bathroom and fireplace would be too far away."

"So that's a 'no' to moving the bed over there?"

"That's a 'no way in hell; you're out of your mind' to moving the bed over there."

"Okay." He grumbled. "You never let me have what I want."

"I just let you have _everything_ you wanted."

"Oh yeah." He pulled her to him into a tight spoon. "You're the best."

"You're the best." She smiled, wrapping her arms around his, loving the way she fit under his chin and the feel of his warm strength all along her back. "I'm going to miss you while you're in California."

"Me too." He said. They hadn't spent a night apart since he had come to Minnesota. "You should come with me."

"Okay." She sleepily agreed. "I'll text Johnson that I had to go to California for a few days but I'll be back in the office on Monday. It'll be fine."

"Are you being sarcastic?"

"Am I still awake?"

"I can't always tell in the dark."

"Oookay, I don't even know what to do with that."

"You _always_ know what to do with it." He chortled.

"Are we still talking about my penchant for sarcasm?"

"I wasn't."

"You really don't get this 'working for a living' thing, do you?" she asked.

"I get that it sucks." He said. "It gets in the way of us having fun."

"You're having fun." She assured him.

"Yeah," he admitted. "But if it weren't for your job we'd be free to do whatever we want, whenever we want, _where_ ever we want."

"_That_ sounds like a meaningful existence." She snorted. "I like my obligations. It's not that you don't come first, but…you can't be the only thing in my life. I don't want to be one of those useless people that just bounce from one fun event to the next. Neither do you. I want to be involved; I want to be part of something bigger. I want to matter, at least a little bit, in making the world a nicer place for others besides myself."

"You want to be Sam Beckett; leaping through time, righting wrongs and fixing lives."

"I don't know about leaping through time."

"Good; time travel is still impossible. As for the rest; you make the world a nicer place for me."

"And you make it a nicer place for me too but I'm glad you're writing; I don't want you spending every waking moment thinking about nothing but me and having fun."

"It's more like nothing but fun and having you." He joked. "Don't forget; writing _is_ fun and my main character is you, so…"

"Well, my job is fun too. It may not be a nonstop chuckle fest but I enjoy it."

"I just wish you didn't have to do it every day." He complained.

"There's no such thing as a part time FBI agent."

"Sure there is; they're called 'consultants'."

"I don't want to be a consultant; I want to be a field agent. A lead investigator. Don't make me defend my career every time you want to hop on a jet."

"Sorry. I don't mean to." He murmured in her ear. "I know you love your job. I'm _glad_ you love it, I'm just saying; if the time ever comes when you don't love it anymore, feel free to retire. With a little careful planning, we can probably make it on my income."

"Now who's being sarcastic?" she elbowed him in the belly.

"Moi? _Never_." He giggled.

"Just hyperbolic?"

"I _hate_ hyperbole. I'd rather die a million horrible deaths than touch it with a thirty nine and a half foot pole."

"Really?"

"Nah. Hyperbole is okay. It's great. I _love_ hyperbole. It makes me har—"

"So how long are you planning on being on the coast?"

"Oh…I don't know. Just a couple of days, tops. Patch things up with Trina and do a little surfing. Dick's been bugging me to come out."

"You staying in LA or going down to Neptune?"

"In between. I'm playing it by ear."

"Were you planning on seeing my Dad at all?"

"Um…"

"You don't have to," she assured him with a yawn. "But if he finds out you were out there and didn't even say hi, he might…"

"Shoot me?"

"Yeah." She giggled again.

"I think you're overestimating the Sheriff's taste for my company." He said.

"What?" she scoffed. "You're his favorite."

"His favorite what?"

"Well, you're _my_ favorite." She said, snuggling against his chest. "You're bringing Jeff aren't you?"

"I won't need him around when I'm talking to Trina," Logan said. "And he'd just be in the way at the beach."

"Take him anyway." Veronica urged. "He could use the time to go see his family."

"I thought he might like a few free days here to hang out with Bryn."

"Hunh…it might do him some good to get away from her for a few days." Veronica stated.

"What? Why?" Logan asked, alarmed. "What's wrong with Bryn?"

"Apparently nothing," Veronica admitted. "She's gorgeous, funny and smart. They're completely mismatched."

"I know you don't like JR but that's pretty cold."

"I _do_ like Jeff!" She protested. "But it took me years to figure out there's a lot of good stuff beneath all the layers of snide."

"He got used to you, too." Logan grinned.

"JR is great." She said, reluctantly. "I just don't see Bryn sticking around long enough to find out."

"How do you figure?"

"Come on. How do you think it ends with a girl like her and a guy like him?"

"Happily ever after?"

"Right." She snorted. "Because in your experience, hot girls fall for _nice_ guys?"

"Are you saying that you're not hot or that I'm not nice?" He asked. "Anyway, I'm not sure my experience is anything to go by. Is this like that time you freaked on Jackie because of Wallace?"

"What?!" Veronica squeaked, indignantly, twisting around to face him.

"I was drunk, so I may be remembering it wrong," Logan said, charitably, "but I seem to recall you going all Mama Bear on that poor girl because you thought she was Wallace's date, or my…Did you freak out because you thought she was _my_ date?"

"I never did any such thing!" She said loftily, conveniently forgetting that she had done exactly that at their senior Home Coming Dance.

"You have always been so cute when you're jealous." He sighed, happily nostalgic. "I mean, except for those times when you weren't."

"You were drunk." Veronica said, firmly. "Never happened."

"Au contraire, mon petite, I used to be drunk quite often." He corrected her. "But that does remind me that Wallace, the nicest guy we know, has had plenty of hot girls."

"And did those little affairs ever end well?" Veronica demanded, easily keeping up with his conversational pirouettes. "And Wallace is a _catch."_

"You're saying JR isn't?"

"He lives over our garage." Veronica snorted. "How many girls do you think have _that_ on their 'must have' lists?"

"He's employed. I hear that's a real turn on these days."

"I'm just saying they have nothing in common!" Veronica warned. "She'll get tired of him sooner or later and the longer it lasts the worse it'll be when she rips his heart out."

"Since when do you care what happens to JR?"

"I just don't think you'd like it if he gets all twisted up over her, that's all." Veronica mumbled into his chest.

"You're such a phony." He giggled, unconvinced. "You pretend you don't care but you're worried about him!"

"Am not."

"Are too." He squeezed her tightly.

"Am not!" she pretended to push him away.

"You're nothing but a softy;" He rolled on top of her, "a tiny, blond marshmallow."

"I'm done talking to you," she giggled, still trying to push him off of her. "_Go to sleep."_

"You're a mouthful of sticky, delicious sweetness." He pressed kisses down her face, neck and shoulders as he spoke.

"BE QUIET." She gasped, trying to wriggle out from beneath him. "_I'm sleeping."_

"And you're even better when you're dipped in chocolate." He murmured, moving under the covers.

"Mmmm…_you'd_ be even better dipped in chocolate." She purred.

"Whoa." His head popped up from beneath the blankets and he rolled off of her. "Calm down. People are trying to sleep over here."

* * *

As it was, JR wanted to go to LA and he spent the morning telling Logan all the reasons why it was imperative that he come along. It was early afternoon when Logan called Veronica to give her his itinerary.

"We've got a villa at Pelican Hill," Logan said as he packed a bag, referring to the luxury resort on the coast of Newport Beach. "JR is going to make sure everything is up to my standards, then he's heading down to Neptune to see his folks while I go duke it out with Trina, once and for all."

"That's the right attitude." Veronica nodded, approvingly. "Go in there with your hackles up, fists raised and beat some sense into that sister of yours."

"Why is it that I can sense your sarcasm so much better in the light of day?"

"I don't think it's the light," Veronica lowered her voice to be sure that no one in an adjacent cubicle overheard her, "as much as the fact that we're not lying next to each other, naked."

"What, you think that distracts me?" he raised an eyebrow, skeptically.

"From _Trina?"_ she teased.

"Who?"

"Logan."

"What are you wearing?"

"Great. You've just disproved my theory while, ironically, proving me right."

"I'm imagining that you're naked." He sighed.

"I'm at work!" she laughed.

"When are you coming home?"

"I'm not the one leaving town," she reminded him. " What's your plan?"

"I like that 'lying next to each other naked' idea."

"Focus, Doll Face! You've got a flight to consider, a war with your sister to end; you're swamped."

"You started it. Keep up the dirty talk and I won't get out of this room, much less to California."

"Seriously, what's your plan?" Veronica asked, trying to keep him on point. "How are you going to approach her?"

"I don't know…I guess I thought I'd just wing it." He shrugged, reaching into his suitcase and tossing out a pair of socks.

"Not a great idea," She said. "You can't apologize if she won't let you in the door. Bring her flowers and candy; that's always a good start."

Logan was uncomfortable about Veronica being all alone in the big house for days. She just laughed at him, reminding him that she'd been spending frequent nights on her own since she was 16, the house had an alarm system and she was trained in self defense and the use of side arms.

"Don't worry your pretty little head," she assured him, "I'll sleep with my Sig within reach."

"I'd feel better if you had a tire iron handy." He smirked.

"I'll keep that under my pillow." She joked. "I dare anyone to try and get the drop on me while I'm sleeping!"

"The Great Pumpkin better not make the rounds while I'm gone."

"Well, if you come home to a kitchen full of pies, you'll know something has gone horribly amiss."

* * *

"God, I miss you already." Logan said into the phone several hours later.

He stood in front of a set of floor to ceiling French doors leading out onto a wide veranda with a view of the seventeenth hole and the ocean beyond. His luxury villa at Pelican Hill featured six such doors; three off the common living area and one in each of the three large, well appointed bedrooms. Two of the bedrooms opened onto the western facing veranda; the third had a smaller, private veranda with a view of one of the resort's large, beautiful swimming pools.

"I miss you too." Veronica said, using his call as an excuse to take a break from her computer. "I'm still at the office because I kind of dread going home when I know you're not there."

"This is stupid; I'm coming home."

"No, you're not. You went all the way out there to patch things up with your sister and you're not coming home till you do."

"I don't wanna." he whined.

"At least make an effort! She's your sister." Veronica insisted. "Besides, it's good for us to miss each other. Think of how much fun it will be to see each other again after a couple of days."

"Is this like that stupid theory you had about loving each other warts and all? 'Cause that sucked."

"It's not my fault your warts turned out to be Madison Sinclair!" she snapped into the phone, immediately regretting her words. Logan said nothing as she bit her lip, screwed her eyes shut and said "Yeah, that did suck."

"But in the end, you loved me anyway." He smiled.

"I did. I do." She sighed. "And to prove how much I trust you, I think you should take some time to get some surfing in while you're there."

"You do?"

"Yeah. Then I won't have to listen to you whine about it."

"When do I ever whine about it?"

"You don't." she admitted. "This is a pre-emptive strike."

"Wow. We've come a long way since the days when you got all bitch-cakes on me over going to Mexico for the weekend." Logan observed.

"I never got all 'bitch-cakes' on you for that!" she protested.

"Check your files, Sweetheart. Bitch-cakes was your go-to attitude."

"It wasn't the surfing I objected to," she said, defending herself. "It was what you did when you weren't surfing."

"Surf, eat, sleep. To which did you have an objection?"

"Hah! And the company you kept."

"You mean Dick?"

"Compared to some of your other safari companions, Dick is an upstanding citizen."

"I'm glad you think so; I'm meeting him at the beach tomorrow."

"You know, Dick has improved amazingly since he married Mel."

"Yeah, it's wild how tame he got when she caught him by the balls."

"I still can't believe Mel decided _he_ was a keeper." Veronica mused.

"Life is strange." He agreed. "Do you have any idea how many people would say that about me?"

"People think you're strange?"

"Well, very few would describe me as a 'keeper'."

"Mmmm. You're my little secret, Baby Lips." She smiled. "Now you'd better get a move on if you're going to win your way back into Trina's good graces. Don't forget the candy and flowers."

"I won't." Logan assured her. He ended the call and then frowned. "_'Baby Lips'_?"

As if on cue, the door to the villa burst open and Candy bounced in, followed by a scowling JR.

"This place is AWESOME!" Candy yelled. "There's like; two golf courses, a bunch of pools, bars, shit to eat…and the beach is like, RIGHT THERE!"

"I can't believe you brought him along." JR said, fixing his glare on Logan.

"He was a lot more fun on the flight than you were." Logan said. It was true; JR had spent the time in the private jet immersed in his laptop while Logan and Candy played video games on the flat screen. Having no money, Candy had bet haircuts against Logan's hundred dollar bills. Candy had been down three cuts when they crossed the Rockies but by the time the luxurious little aircraft had set down at John Wayne Airport, Logan had owed him six hundred dollars.

"I can't be responsible for him, Moneybags." JR muttered in an undertone.

"Relax, Grandma!" Logan laughed and clapped JR on the shoulder. "No one's asking you to be responsible for anything."

"So what are we gonna do first?" Candy asked, flopping down on the deep, comfy couch.

"I'm going home." JR said, picking up his bag.

"You live around here?" Candy asked.

"We both grew up near San Diego," Logan said. "About ninety miles down the coast."

"Why the fuck did you move to _Minneapolis?"_ Candy demanded.

"I followed him." JR nodded toward Logan.

"I followed Veronica." Logan admitted. Candy nodded as though that explained everything.

"See you tomorrow," JR said, pulling open the front door.

"What time?" Logan asked.

"I'll be back in time to bail you out, if that's what you're asking." JR grinned.

"No need for that!" Logan assured him. "I've got plenty of people who can post bail here."

When JR had left, Logan turned to Candy. "I've got some stuff to do, too." He said. "You okay here on your own?"

"Uh…_yeah." _Candy chuffed. "How long you gonna be gone?"

"I don't know. Don't wait up." Logan cast a derogatory glance at Candy's outfit. "There's a gift shop; take some of that money you won off me and get yourself some decent clothes."

"Sweet!"

* * *

Logan ran into no trouble at all getting onto the studio lot. He hadn't expected any difficulty there, it was his sister's reception that worried him. Even so, when he'd been shown into the studio in which her show was shooting, she'd flashed him a big smile when he caught her eye. As soon as she had a break, she came over to where he was sitting and gave him a hug.

"Logan! I'm so glad you came!" she cried happily, throwing her arms around him. His surprise was tempered as she hissed in his ear; "_not here!" _but the thought also occurred to him that his sister just might be a better actress than he had ever given her credit for.

"We have so much to catch up on!" she sang, letting go of him. "It'll be a few hours till I'm through for the day. Do you… want to come back later?"

"I'd like to hang out and watch if that's okay?" he glanced at the Director, over Trina's shoulder. "I promise to be good."

"Oh!" Trina, plainly surprised, looked to the Director, who just smiled and nodded.

"He's been on set before," the man said. "I'm sure he knows the drill."

Several hours later, a towel around her neck as though she'd been doing road work, Trina came to find him.

"Okay, baby bro…let's do this." She said with a tired smile.

"You hungry?" he asked as they made their way out of the studio to the parking lot. "You want to get dinner somewhere?"

"I'm mostly tired." She said. "We've been at it since six."

"In the _morning?"_ He had never known her to rise before ten.

"Yeah. Yesterday was a technical nightmare so we had a lot to cover today. Blah, blah blah…I know how much you hate talking about the business. Let's just get something delivered and we can…shit." She stopped dead in the middle of the lot. "I forgot; I used the car service this morning."

"Don't you use it everyday?" Logan asked, grinning.

"No, only on the early calls." Trina headed back to the gate house without noticing her brother's amusement. "Usually I like to drive; it gives me time to collect myself and focus but days like today I found that what I really need is that extra time to wake up and mainline coffee. Turns out, I'm not as young as I used to be."

"You're twenty nine."

"I used to be twenty six." She sighed. "Hey, Rocko! I'm done for the day; think I can get a ride home?" This was to the middle aged dispatcher in the gate house. He gave Trina a big smile and a nod as he picked up the phone and called for a car.

"You know, Courtney Cox was thirty when Friends first aired." Logan said when she turned back to him.

"That's right!" she perked up. "And Lisa Kudrow was like, a million!"

"A million, give or take 999,969 years." Logan nodded, then glanced at the dispatcher, "and his name is 'Ricky'."

"He lets me call him 'Rocko'." Trina cut her eyes at Logan as a long black Lincoln glided to a stop next to them. Before the driver had time to get out, Logan had opened the back door for his sister to tumble into the wide, comfortable back seat.

"Home, Jeeves!" Trina commanded as Logan got in beside her. As soon as the car pulled away from the gate, she hit the power button, raising the privacy window, then looked at Logan. "You were so nice to me in front of my coworkers. I appreciate you keeping the big guns in check until we get to my place."

"Do you think anyone would mind if I puked in the limo?" Logan asked.

Even with the window up, the driver could hear Trina's laugh.

* * *

"Did you think I came to the set today to pick a fight with you?" Logan asked as they dug into the Pad Thai dinner they'd had delivered.

"The thought crossed my mind." Trina said dryly as she raised her glass of chardonnay to her lips. "But only because that's what happens every time we talk."

"Yeah…" Logan looked at her. "Sorry about that. That's why I'm here."

"So pick away." She sighed.

"No! I'm here to _apologize_." He explained. "I'm done with all of that. What happened happened and it doesn't matter anymore if we see it differently. I'm willing to call a truce, if you are."

"If I am?" she raised her eyebrows. "Logan, I've been trying to avoid fighting with you for years."

"Have you? I didn't notice." He answered before he could stop himself. She just rolled her eyes.

"Of course you didn't." she sighed. "You have a one track mind and once I was off your radar, you never gave me a thought, did you?"

"I called _you_ the other day." He protested.

"And I _appreciated_ that!" she retorted. "Best congratulatory call _ever."_

"What? I'm a jackass! You never noticed?"

"Well, I did," she laughed. "But it's refreshing to hear _you_ say it!"

"So," he lifted his wine glass as in a toast "Truce?"

She said nothing, but lifted her own glass to lightly touch his. They both drank.

"You know," Logan began, "I always assumed you wanted to be an actress because the idea of working for a living gave you hives but…"

"It does." She admitted.

"I watched you today." He said firmly. "You work your ass off on that set."

She chuckled and took another sip of wine. "It's the most fun I've ever had." She admitted. "And not just because it's a hit; I do enjoy the publicity and the attention; not everyone can handle the fame but we were raised on it, weren't we?"

"Yes; early bedtimes, eat your broccoli and smile for the cameras." Logan grimaced.

"_I love it_!" Trina laughed. "I admit it; I love the cameras, the paparazzi, all of it! But you know; the best part is_ knowing_ that we're producing something _good_. That's a totally new experience for me."

"Like a virgin." He smirked.

"You remember the first time you got it right?" she challenged.

"I always got it right." He lied.

"HA!" she snorted. "Doesn't matter how good the work is if the project is wrong. You introduced me to at least one of your wrong projects although I don't remember…was she 'Rode Hard' or 'Put Away Wet'?"

"_She_ was a nightmare best left unnamed and unremembered." Logan did a full body shudder.

"Never mind." With a shrug of one shoulder, Trina consigned Kendall Casablancas to the memory hole. "I've finally got it right and it's the best feeling, _ever. _ It's like my whole life finally makes sense! Like you must have felt when you realized Veronica was _it."_

"_So_ much you don't know…" Logan murmured under his breath.

"I've been around this business for a long time…" Trina said.

"Really?"

"Knock it off with the sarcasm; I'm trying to tell you something!" She chastised him. "Something you need to understand."

"Fine!" He threw himself back on the couch in an exaggerated expression of being consigned to hearing her out. "Speak!"

"I spent years hanging out on sets, trying to find a way in; dating craft service personnel, script supervisors, extras…every one of them really an actor, writer or producer. People just like me; willing to do about anything, put up with anything for a shot at the big time. I had an advantage of course. Daddy always ran interference for me and I know the name got me attention I never would've rated if I were Trina Smabey of Bumfuck Illinois."

"You know there really is no such place? I looked."

"Would you shut up?" Trina glared at him but couldn't help smiling. "I'm trying to tell you that I always knew how much I owed Aaron Echolls for being my Dad. He made me feel like I belonged."

"You belonged!"

"People think that being adopted by movie stars is like winning the adoption lottery; what could be better? But it's an inverted fairy tale! I wasn't the Ugly Duckling that turned out to be a swan; I was a duck, waddling around in a herd of swans!"

"More like a murder of crows." Logan observed.

"Whatever. Growing up, I never felt beautiful or glamorous enough. Daddy made me feel like I was both. You remember the day he beat the shit out of Dylan—"

"Goran. Yes. I'm not likely to forget it."

"When Daddy yelled '_My _daughter' at him…that was like…the happiest moment of my life."

"That made you _happy?"_

"I know." Trina sighed, acknowledging the wrongness of her emotions. "I feigned horror and a little part of me _was_ horrified but a much bigger part just fixated on the fact that Aaron Echolls was screaming, for all the world to hear, that _I was his daughter_. You have no idea how much that meant to me."

"No. I don't." Logan muttered.

"It never crossed my mind that what I saw that night was something that was always there, just beneath the surface. I thought it was just…paternal rage; a once in a lifetime thing. I would have taken a bullet for him right then."

"That would have been a miscarriage of justice." Logan said, not quite under his breath.

Trina took another sip of her wine and looked hard at her brother. "I'm only telling you this so you can try to understand why I stood with him. He was _always_ on my side. That was the story I preferred."

"When faced with a choice between a good story and the awful truth, choose the story. Yeah." This all squared with what Charlie had said.

"He's been gone for five years." Trina took a sip of wine and continued. "When I first heard about his suicide, I was _devastated._ You have no idea how bereft I felt!"

"You've got to be kidding." Logan said, dryly.

"I'm not! I had lost the only person who had always been in my corner and I had _no one_ to turn to!"

"You think _I have no idea how that feels_?" Logan demanded, incredulous. "Where have you been for the last _seven years_?"

"Look, Yogi; _I'm sorry_ I wasn't there when Mom died. I _didn't know_ what that must have been like for you until I went through it. I should have been there for you. I just assumed you had your little cohort around you, like always. The only reason you ever needed me at all is because I could drive and buy alcohol."

"That's what you thought." He muttered.

"When Lily died, you had people to mourn with you; The Kanes, Duncan, Veronica…When Mom died, you had Daddy…When he died and I needed someone to understand how I felt, I discovered that you weren't the only one who hated him. Everyone did_. Everyone."_

"What?!" Logan was so surprised by this revelation that it knocked his objections to her misconceptions about his own losses right out of his head.

"They kissed his ass because he made them millions. I spent decades among the wannabees on the fringes of Hollywood. Besides our big dreams, you know what we all had in common? We were at the mercy of the big shots…and they knew it. Turns out Daddy wasn't very nice to people who were of no use to him. Oh, he had a veneer of charm but it didn't take much to wear that away. Once I'd lost his protection, once no one was afraid of repercussions, there were plenty of people more than ready to tell me stories. It's really appalling, the joy people take in telling you things they have to know you don't want to hear!"

"You grew up in Neptune and didn't learn _that_ until Aaron died?"

"Shut up. You know me; I always try to see the good in people." Trina said, loftily, causing her brother to burst out laughing. "I do! You should try it; it makes life so much more pleasant. Well, most of the time."

"I bet it does!" he gasped. "Your problem, Trine, is that you see good where it doesn't exist."

"You're probably right." She sighed. "I've cut some people more slack than they deserved. But I have no regrets! You know why? All those years of making friends with nobody's has paid off in spades. Spades, Yogi! You know how I got this gig? I never read for comedies! I assumed it was our name that got me an audition."

"Well, it is Hollywood." He shrugged. "Are you saying it's not?"

"NO!" she laughed. "The show's creator is a guy who was a Grip on Wilder Things, the casting director was a script coordinator on Law and Order and the director is a kid I knew when he worked for craft services on The Surreal World! Everyone involved is someone who has known me for years and thought it would be fun to work with me! I finally get my big break and it had _nothing to do_ with Daddy!"

"Oh my God." Logan looked at her, eyes wide. "You actually got hired for your own qualities?"

"Yes!" Trina's voice betrayed her own wonderment at the situation. "No one saw_ that_ coming."

"You always did have a knack for getting along with people." Logan said, grudgingly. "Your pores _leak_ with appreciation for the Little People Without Whom You Never Would Have Made It."

"And you always had the knack for pissing off everyone within earshot?"

"That's not a knack," Logan explained. "I worked hard on developing that skill."

"But why? What's it ever gotten you?" she asked. He cut his eyes sharply at her, then rolled them.

"Now you sound just like Charlie." He groaned.

"Charlie?" Trina asked, blankly.

"Charlie Stone. Your half brother." Logan reminded her, irritated by her continued refusal to acknowledge Charlie.

"Oh. Him." Trina made a face. "_Your_ half brother."

"Why do you do that?"

"Do what?" she pouted.

"'Your' half brother. 'Your' mother. No one makes as big a deal about you being adopted as you do."

"I…guess it was so no one else could point a finger at me and say 'who are you trying to kid? You're not one of them'. It's like girls who claim they're fat; then all their friends tell them how great they look."

"I'm the one who wanted to be someone else but you always made it a point."

"It's hard to believe we grew up in the same family yet our experiences were so different." Trina said.

"They chose you; they got stuck with me." Logan smirked.

"Everyone adored you." Trina scoffed.

"I don't think that word means what you think it means." Logan muttered.

"I just think it's odd," Trina said, tossing back the rest of her wine in an attempt to hide the bitterness in her voice, "That I can reach out to you a million ways from Sunday and you just slap me back but one word from Charlie the Wonderful and you're on the next flight to LA."

"I—it…" Logan blinked as a strange sort of déjà vu washed over him. "What are you talking about?"

"Nothing." She pouted. "But I'd like to know where the hell Charlie was when you needed bail…or a ride home from T.J. 'cause all your buddies left you passed out on the beach. I'd like to know how many times Charlie made excuses for you when you were too hung over to show your face at breakfast. Or kept you away from her when y- when Mom was shit faced."

"Jesus, I must have been a pain in the ass!" Logan snapped. "No wonder you don't want another brother; you can't stand the one you've already got. Don't get me wrong; I don't blame you for hating me from second I showed up."

"I didn't hate you!" Trina cried indignantly.

"Right." Logan rolled his eyes. "I've seen the headlines; 'Echolls Family Has First Real Child'. That had to have filled you with filial devotion."

"There was _never any such headline_."

"I meant the headlines between the lines."

"I _never_ hated you! You were my baby brother; I wanted to dress you up and push you around in my doll buggy! I adored you from the second they brought you home but Mom wouldn't let me anywhere near you." Trina made a sound of disgust. "Just because I said I wanted to bite your face."

"Mm…what?"

"You had the fattest, reddest little cheeks!" Trina recalled. "They looked like candy. I may have licked you but I never would have _bitten_ you. I was seven years old, for Christ's sake! Even your mother must have known I was old enough to know better."

"Oh my God." Logan stared at her.

"That's right." Trina said defiantly. "I'm not twenty nine, I'm _thirty._ I turned twenty one when I was nineteen and I stayed there for four years, _so what_? I have something _better_ than youth or beauty."

"You're that good an actor?" he asked.

"I'm a terrible actor!" she laughed. "But I have presence and that can _not _be faked."

Logan couldn't argue with that; his older sister had always known how to fill a room with her personality. He laughed.

"Lynne spoiled you rotten," Trina went on. "We all wanted to; you were the cutest little guy who ever walked. Dad was afraid she was spoiling you. He…shit."

"He tried to make a man out me?" Logan politely supplied. She looked at him but her glare quickly melted.

"I tried to be there, Logan." She said. "I went to your stupid Christmas concerts, your surf competitions, you…I don't know; whatever the hell else you did. I was the one who taught you how to tell the star fuckers from your real friends and how to tell the cool kids from the wannabees when you got to High School. Maybe I wasn't there every time you needed me but—"

"You _were_." He cut her off, emphatically, leaning forward earnestly. "It wasn't your job to protect me. You were always there when I needed you. And I would be honored to escort you to any or all of the award season events you think you might need me for."

* * *

Eating dinner and unburdening her soul had the effect of reinvigorating Trina. She insisted on taking him out and showing him what life in the Lime Light could be. She wisely called the car service and for the first time ever, Trina and Logan Echolls were seen together at a most of the hottest venues in LA.

The first places Trina took him to were those in which the paparazzi camped out; no call to her publicist was necessary to get the flash bulbs popping. She loved it all and was surprised to see her younger brother's discomfort. He actually _flinched_.

"Relax, Yogi; the cameras love us!" she said as they entered the dimly lit club filled with those celebrities one can't open a weekly magazine without seeing.

"It's not the cameras, it's the accompanying text." He told her.

"Oh what are you afraid of?" she asked. "You're not 'Aaron Echolls' son' anymore; now you're 'Trina Echolls' brother'!"

"Oh, I haven't been 'Aaron Echolls' son' in a while. You haven't been paying attention; I've been 'Accused murderer' for years now."

"So run with it;" She advised. "Start a band and call yourselves 'Accused Murderers'. Look! There's Katy! KATY, YOU LITTLE BITCH, I LOVE YOUR SHOES!"

And the night was off to a flying start.

* * *

Trina dragged Logan from place to place until he lost track of how many they'd hit. Not that it mattered; he couldn't have cared less. They were all the same; dimly lit, strobing lights, music too loud to do more than smile and pantomime, packed too full of too many vaguely familiar people all too determined to have the _best night ever_. He could barely remember when, or if, he'd ever enjoyed the club scene.

_No wonder I dropped so much Ex in the bad old days and drank myself sick; I was trying to escape this boredom._

At first the nonstop flashbulbs bothered Logan but he quickly adapted, especially when he realized they were mostly aimed at his sister. This was a new development in their lives and welcomed by both. Trina was delighted to introduce Logan to everyone until he wasn't sure if she was showing him off or just showing off. Little by little, as they went from club to club all over town, he began to notice that Trina didn't just know all the beautiful people; she knew everyone. There wasn't a bartender, waiter or coat checker in a first, second or third tier establishment that Trina wasn't on a first name (or close facsimile thereof) basis.

Logan's knee jerk reaction was to be embarrassed by her popularity but then he gave himself a mental kick in the shorts and decided to be proud of her instead.

"You actually like this, don't you?" he asked at the ninth or tenth place as she shoved a drink into his hand.

"What, this club?" she said, taking a sip of her own drink. "Not really but Gutter Punk Bill is an old friend; I had to stop by and say 'hi'."

"I don't mean this place, I mean _all this."_ Logan waved his hand in an all encompassing gesture. "All these _people."_

"Well, yes!" she laughed. "I know it's shallow but I love being admired by strangers! Don't drink that whole thing; we're not done yet."

"Oh God." Logan tipped back his drink despite her warning.

"You tired?" She asked, unable to believe it."Like an old married man?"

"I thought it would be different, now that you're a star." He admitted. "These places are all the same."

"I'll show you what's different." She smirked. "follow me."

Two minutes and a quiet conversation with an enormous bouncer later and Logan found himself following Trina up a dark winding stairway. The VIP lounge was a large, tastefully appointed room furnished with a private bar, beautiful couches and armchairs and a waitstaff ready to supply whatever refreshments the select patrons could possibly desire. One wall was entirely made of one way glass so the privileged few could watch the action on the dance floor below without being ogled themselves. The music from below was piped in but tuned low to be background for conversation and deal making of every kind.

"I've been coming here for years," Trina whispered in Logan's ear, "and never knew this room existed till six weeks ago. Ratings have their privileges; now I have my own couch. Come on."

Logan dutifully followed her to a deep, soft leather couch with a clear view of the floor below. She draped herself over one end of it and indicated he should make himself comfortable.

"They serve the good stuff up here." She said. "Anything you'd like."

As she spoke, a young man in uniform appeared at her elbow. "Trina, you're looking gorgeous as ever tonight? The usual?" he asked.

"Yes please, Antoine!" she smiled. "and my little brother will have…?" she looked at Logan.

"Dirty martini." Logan said. "Grey Goose."

In the blink of an eye, they had their drinks in hand and were enjoying the relative quiet after the din downstairs.

"Grey Goose." Trina said. "What are you, fifty?"

"I like what I like." Logan shrugged. "What are you drinking? Wait, don't tell me; a cranberritini."

"No, smartypants. Straight up cranberry juice."

"That's it?"

"Yep. It's delicious, low cal, promotes UT health and looks like I'm having a cocktail. At my age, I really can't drink all night and be fresh for work in the a.m."

"Is that all you've been drinking tonight?" He was surprised.

"No, I had a sip of a beer at a few of the places we hit. Mostly, I just pretend to drink; that's why I order bottles and not draft; easier to fake it."

"Faking it is your thing?" he innocently asked.

"What do you think acting is?" she smiled. "Are you having fun?"

"A blast." He said absently, looking around the room at the other small knots of VIPs. "You know any of these people?"

"Uh huh." She smiled at someone across the room. "But up here, we pretend we don't."

"Do all the clubs have rooms like this?" He was pretty sure he knew the answer.

"Uh huh." Her smile grew broader.

"Can you get us into all of them?" he was pretty sure he knew the answer to that question, too.

There simply wasn't time to visit the VIP rooms of all the top tier clubs in the area so he left it up to Trina to choose the best. Before last call, they'd managed to make appearances in four of the places Trina had spent the last few years dying to get into. In each of them, they'd been ushered immediately into the innermost inner sanctum of the establishment. Having a hit TV show in LA was like being royalty in Tsarist Russia.

* * *

It was close to 3:00 a.m. when the limo finally pulled up to Trina's courtyard and the two of them tumbled giggling out of the back seat.

"Thank you, Ricardo; you're a prince among men." Trina said as she stuffed a large tip into the hand of the driver. "I'll speak well of you ever after this evening!"

"When do you have to be at the studio?" Logan asked as they dragged themselves in the front door.

"Oh, I've got plenty of time." Trina assured him. "I'm not due in the makeup chair for _hours_."

"I shouldn't have kept you out all night; sorry about that." He giggled, sounding not the least bit sorry.

"Shut up!" she shoved him toward her couch. "I haven't had done that in months and I haven't had so much fun doing it in _years!_"

"You've _never_ had so much fun; you've never done it with me." He told her as he kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the couch.

"That's true." She agreed. "You're much more fun now that you're legal! Back in the day, you drank like it was a contest to see who could get sick first."

"I drank to forget!" he proclaimed.

"Did it work?" she asked, recognizing her cue.

"_I don't remember!"_ they cried in unison.

"I'm a grown up now." He murmured, his eyes drifting closed.

"That's not all you are." She laughed. "You're a snob!"

"I. Am. Not." He solemnly denied the charge without opening his eyes.

"Yes you are. You acted like I was dragging you from the slums of Calcutta to a leper colony until you found out about the VIP rooms. Then, you miraculously transformed into Mr. Life of the Party, Pass the Cigars and Caviar!"

"I was being polite." He opened his eyes and looked at her. "I didn't want to be rude to your friends."

"Vince is my friend," she acknowledged "But I've never seen that other guy before."

"They were playing poker; I wanted in." he explained.

"You wanted _in_ alright! Snob."

"I'm not a snob," he said, patiently. "I'm an equal opportunity misanthrope. I'll grant you they appear similar but the differences are significant. You can look it up."

"Who was that guy, anyway?" Trina was done teasing him for his classism. She had kicked off her own shoes and was taking off her earrings. "You two sure seemed to hit it off."

"His name is Nick. Nick Peterson. He's in Imports. He invited me to come on his boat."

"Wow. All that on a first date? He loves you." She rooted through the linen closet in the hall.

"Of course he loves me; he took all my money." Logan explained the mechanics of male bonding. "He thinks he can win even more off me if he can get me sea sick."

"Well, the joke's on him!" Trina laughed as she tossed the pillow at him. "You never get sea sick!"

"Never say never." he mumbled as he punched the pillow and closed his eyes again.

It had been a very good evening.

To be continued...


	38. Chapter 38 Predatory Females

Chapter 38

Veronica stayed late at the office, ordering a sandwich in for dinner, to take advantage of Logan's absence and get as much work done as possible. She had never had any qualms about being home alone when she lived with her father but for some reason she was hesitant to be alone in the house she shared with Logan. Finally, deciding that she was being ridiculous, she closed her files and went home. Traffic down the 94 corridor was heavy on a Friday night but nothing compared to the rush several hours earlier. Compared to the traffic up and down the southern California coast, it was nothing at all.

Parking her Audi in the huge garage, she had strolled through her starlit back yard, breathing deeply of the autumn air and taking stock. The trees had lost most of their leaves and stretched skeletal fingers across the sky, giving an eerie, Halloween picture-book aura to the night that she'd never really experienced in Neptune. She could smell leaves and someone in the neighborhood had a back yard bonfire going. Standing on the patio, she looked up at the sky and gave a shiver. A flock of geese flew south overhead, their bodies black missiles against the midnight blue sky. The windows of JR's apartment over the garage were dark, reminding her that she'd never really been alone on the property before.

She took a deep breath and unlocked the back door.

She turned on the lights in her kitchen as the door closed behind her. Standing still, she listened to the silence of the empty house. She smiled. She had been a tiny bit worried that without Logan there, she wouldn't feel at home; that she would feel as if she were trespassing on someone else's turf. She felt no such thing. This was her space; the home in which she was hostess to her friends, where her Dad could feel free to put up his feet, the home she was building with Logan. There were traces of him everywhere, from the barstools shoved out of place beneath the island where he'd had his morning coffee and the newspapers he'd left strewn across the table to the several pairs of his shoes he'd abandoned near the front door. It felt as though he were merely in another room.

She loved it.

"There really is no place like home." She said, as she tossed her keys into a silver dish on the sideboard.

Sighing with contentment, she tidied up the shoes and tossed the papers in the recycling bin. Then she went on up to bed.

Despite her exhaustion, she tossed and turned. She felt ridiculous, lying alone in that enormous bed. Twice, she dozed off, only to awaken with a jerk, her arm flailing for Logan. Catching hold of his pillow, she pulled it to herself. It smelled like him. She sighed, happy and lonely at the same time.

_Oh my God, I can't believe I'm such a cliché._

She pushed the pillow away from herself and fell into a deep, satisfying sleep.

When she awoke in the morning, she was wrapped around his pillow, clutching it as if it were a life preserver.

* * *

Logan returned to Pelican Hill to find that JR had returned and was already pissed at Candy, who was sprawled on the couch, wearing an expensive dressing gown that was most decidedly _not_ hotel issue, eating room service and pointedly ignoring JR.

"It's about time you got back, Moneybags!" an agitated JR turned on a more receptive target. "You're not going to _believe_ what's in the other room."

"Mike Tyson's tiger?" Logan asked, hopefully. Before anyone could answer, the door to the third bedroom opened and a tall, slim, immaculately dressed and extremely attractive woman in her mid fifties appeared. "Oh my God," Logan blew out his cheeks. "Adolf Zukor's cougar!"

"I've got to get going, Darling," She said, smiling indulgently at Candy, who did not get up off the couch. "I knew that robe would look fabulous on you. I'll call you later." She bent at the waist and kissed Candy. Logan winced and JR averted his eyes.

Straightening, she sashayed to the door, catching Logan's eye as she opened it.

"Logan." She gave a nod of recognition as she passed through, her face wearing an expression that in a lesser being would have been a smirk.

"Sheri." He gave a curt nod as he swung the door shut behind her.

"You _know_ her?" JR asked, bewildered.

"Yeah." Logan chuffed. He looked at Candy. "How the _hell_ did you hook up with the head of Paramount?"

"We met in the bar." Candy shrugged as he shoveled a blueberry muffin into his mouth. "She tried to get me hammered and said she could make me a star."

"She used that same line on Shatner back in '65." Logan snorted.

"What is she, ninety?" JR blurted.

"Shatner's a star, isn't he?" Candy said, standing and brushing muffin crumbs off his silk robe.

"He's got you there." JR admitted. "She looks pretty damn good for ninety."

"She's not going to make you a star." Logan warned.

"I know _that_." Candy sneered. "I don't want to be some dumb fuck movie star."

"You're half way there already." JR murmured.

"She's a notorious feminist." Logan continued. "Out to prove that a female studio head can be as predatory as any dude. She won't call."

"Duh!" Candy said, flouncing toward his room. "I didn't give her my _real_ number!"

"Jesus." JR shook his head.

"Part of me is absolutely horrified," Logan said thoughtfully.

"And I thought _you_ were the degenerate in the room."JR told him.

"…and another part is proud of our little protégé." Logan admitted. "He's moving right along."

"You might be the worst person I've ever known." JR groaned and dropped his face into his hand.

"No problemo." Logan cheerfully told him. "There's room for all at the bottom."

* * *

While Logan was catching some waves with Dick, Veronica was doing some background research. She had an interview with the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas. In addition to the University of Minnesota, whose campus dominated the Mississippi river as it passed through the heart of town, the Twin Cities were packed with bastions of higher learning. You couldn't swing a dead badger without hitting a college or a university, whether large, small, private, public or denominational. Veronica had chosen UST when she discovered that it's Founder's Hall on the Minneapolis campus boasted an actual frescoed ceiling, painted by Minnesota native Mark Balma, one of only three fresco painters in the country. She thought that fact alone gave the school credibility in the area of expertise she was exploring.

Dr. Therese Lang agreed to meet with Veronica in her office on the St. Paul Campus of UST. The Dean had been puzzled as to why an FBI agent wanted to pick her brain about the current state of the market in fine art but with very little effort Veronica was able to get her talking about a subject that was clearly very close to her heart. It had been an illuminating morning, culminating in a virtual tour of the Hall, with an expert's explanation and description of the magnificent fresco that stretched overhead.

Veronica's head was swirling with information as she started her car and pulled out of the ramp. Frescoes vs. murals, watercolor, plaster, scaffolding, religious imagery and the sheer effort such an undertaking demanded made her head spin. Idling at a red light, she couldn't help but think that wallpaper was so much easier while simultaneously wondering what Balma would charge to do her bedroom ceiling.

_Logan would never go for cherubs or fluffy clouds…maybe he'd like Thor and Loki battling in the sky…My God…_Her gaze had settled upon a tall, broad shouldered young man with blonde hair and eyes so bright she could tell they were blue from across the street. He was sitting at an outdoor table at a café and when he laughed, she saw that his teeth were as dazzling as the rest of him. _…that guy could model for Thor…_

Veronica had never been attracted by looks alone but she could certainly appreciate them in the raw. Conner Larkin couldn't compete with the vision of male beauty she was currently staring at.

_Minnesota Vikings. With specimens like that, they could plunder my village any time._

She didn't notice the gorgeous young man's companion until they both stood and he pulled the slim brunette into his arms. She had to go up on her toes to wrap her arms around his neck. When she turned to go, Veronica could see the bright smile on her face.

"DAMN." Veronica's jaw fell open as she watched Bryn practically dance down the sidewalk. The car behind her honked to let her know the light had turned green. Pulling across the intersection, Veronica looked for the first chance to turn around. It took a block or so, enough time for the puff of steam coming out of her ears to dissipate. She had composed herself by the time she pulled up beside JR's girlfriend.

"Hey!" Veronica leaned across the passenger seat of her Audi and hailed the other girl.

"Veronica!" Bryn looked suitably surprised. "Hi!"

"Need a lift?" Veronica offered, her voice all sweetness and light.

"Sure!" Bryn surprised her by accepting and slid into the passenger seat. "What luck! What brings you to this neighborhood?"

"Serendipity." Veronica hit the lock buttons. "Buckle up."

"This is so weird, running into you over here." Bryn said as Veronica maneuvered back out into traffic.

"Not really; my work takes me all over town." Veronica said. "The real question is what are_ you _doingin St. Paul? Don't you go to the University of Minnesota? So, what are you doing over at UST?"

"Not much; just brunch."

"Brunch, huh?" Veronica feigned ignorance. "I guess it's ridiculous to expect you to stay at home while Jeff is out of town. You two have been spending a lot of time together, haven't you?"

"Yes, we have." Bryn smiled.

"So I suppose it's only natural to use the opportunity of him being away to catch up with friends, right? I suppose you have a lot of friends at UST? Or is it just one friend in particular?"

"No one in particular." Bryn answered slowly, her eyes narrowed. "I have lots of friends who go there."

"No one in particular." Veronica muttered, her anger coming closer to the surface. Her fingers drummed on the steering wheel.

"Why do you ask?" Bryn asked, suspiciously.

"Oh, no reason!" Veronica smiled. "In particular."

Neither of them spoke as Veronica merged into traffic on 94, heading toward Minneapolis.

"It is such a bad idea to date someone so far out of your league," Veronica muttered, not quite under her breath.

"Excuse me?" Bryn asked, perplexed.

"Oh, I get it!" Veronica assured her. "The weather, the lake, the sunshine…I'm sure it all seemed like a harmless summer fling; nerd baiting is just _so much fun_. Well, it's autumn now, school's back in session; time for everyone to get back to their real lives…real 'friends' who may have been out of town when this little affair started…believe me, I get it. But don't you think the right thing, the _kind thing, _would be to end it before anyone gets hurt any more than necessary?"

"Why is that necessary at all?" Bryn asked.

"Oh please!" Veronica glared at her. "How did you think this was going to play out?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about people who think it's okay to play with other's emotions just to stroke their own egos; people who buy into the 'love the one you're with' philosophy and string some poor innocent along just because they're bored or lonely or _evil. _I'm talking about people who think its fun to go slumming and make some poor sap fall for them just because they know they can; _I'm talking about you and Jeff_!"

"Oh my God!" Bryn gasped.

"Yeah." Veronica snorted in grim satisfaction. "I've known dozens of girls like you."

"Dozens?"

"My life has been _plagued_ by girls like you." Veronica said dryly.

"But dozens?" Bryn stammered in dismay. "There have been _dozens_?"

"Apparently they grow on trees in southern California!" Veronica assured her. "I can spot 'em from a mile away! Dozens."

"He told me there haven't been _any!"_ Bryn wailed.

"What?" Now Veronica was confused.

"I suppose, in Neptune, Jeff dated a lot of really gorgeous California girls." Bryn said, distraught. "That doesn't come as a total shock but I don't know why he'd _lie_ about it…"

"Jeff Ratner and gorgeous California girls?" the very idea made Veronica's head spin.

"I never thought I was in his league." Bryn admitted. "But it's not very nice of you to say it to my face."

Veronica glared at the other girl for as long as she could before the highway demanded her attention again.

"Don't play stupid with me!" she blurted.

"I'm not _playing_!"

"I'm giving you a chance here; either you let Jeff down easy as soon as he gets back in town or I'm going to lower the boom on you and believe me, you won't think that's easy at all!"

"Is he going to dump me?" Bryn turned large, stricken eyes on Veronica, who blinked in frustration.

"Did you hear a word I just said?" Veronica asked.

"I heard them all but they make no sense!" Bryn cried. "Jeff may have been a player but…but I can't believe he still is!"

"Oh my _God."_ Veronica slapped the steering wheel. "Jeff is NOT a player! But even if he were, I wouldn't let a psycho like you rip his heart out!"

"I'm not going to rip his heart out!" Bryn cried.

"Oh, no," Veronica said sarcastically. "It won't bother him _at all_ when you get tired of nerd/chic and head back to your natural habitat of tall, blond Nordic gods."

"I'm not a psycho! Who said anything about tall, blond…oh." All the air seemed to go out of Bryn as she slumped in her seat. Veronica felt a rush of satisfaction.

_You've been busted, mean girl._

"You saw him." Bryn said, flatly. "The blond haired, blue eyed god."

"Yup." Veronica nodded. "So don't even try."

"You know, I _thought _you might have seen him; that's why I was kind of leery when you asked me who I was with. Girls _always_ ask about him but I figured; you've got Logan, so why would you be interested?"

"I'm not _interested_ in your stupid boy friend!" Veronica protested. "I couldn't help but _see_ him. He's kind of hard to miss. It just makes me wonder what you ever saw in Jeff to begin with! You get tired of big, blond and beautiful? Or did you just feel like dating someone you could destroy? Is Jeff supposed to make _him_ jealous? Because if that's your plan, you seriously miscalculated."

"You think I'm in _his_ league?" Bryn asked curiously.

Veronica blinked. "Are you actually fishing for a compliment now?" she asked, incredulous.

"I don't think so," Bryn said uncertainly.

"You may have gotten the impression that I don't care very much about Jeff," Veronica said, taking a deep breath, "but you're dead wrong. He and I have been through a lot together and Logan depends on him. He's practically family and I don't let _anyone_ hurt my family! I have made anyone who's ever tried deeply regret it."

"Let me see if I've got this straight," Bryn said, her forehead furrowed in thought "Jeff is _not_ a player?"

"No!"

"When you said 'dozens of girls' you didn't mean _his girlfriends_, you meant…"

"NO!"

"…that you've known dozens of heartless, careless…"

"Psycho bitches." Veronica nodded.

"Like _me?"_ Bryn sounded genuinely astonished.

"Like you."

"I see." Bryn turned and looked out the window at the bright, autumn day outside. Veronica glanced at her and saw that her shoulders were shaking a bit. Years of practice had made Veronica impervious to guilty tears. No one who had a guy on the side who looked like that walking, talking God of Thunder could be an object of pity. They sped down the highway in silence as Veronica merged on to 35.

"I…I don't know what to say." Bryn finally admitted. "That's the first time anyone has ever called me a psycho bitch."

"I can only hope it won't be the last." Veronica said, grimly. "Girls like you never get called out. That's how you keep getting away with it."

"I never saw myself that way." Bryn mused.

"They never do." Veronica muttered.

"I certainly never thought I was in JP's league…"

"Who?"

"Oh, the gorgeous blond; His is name is John Paul, after the pope. He goes by JP."

"I don't care." Veronica said firmly.

"He's kind of legendary around here. Even girls who've never actually met him have heard of him."

"I'll bet."

"He's a notorious rake."

"A what?"

"A libertine. Ladies' man. A heartbreaker."

"Sounds like you're perfect for each other. I hope you're very happy together."

"It's not all his fault; Girls have been throwing themselves at him since he was in sixth grade."

"Yeah, yeah; so of course you couldn't help yourself!" Veronica sneered. "You were so flattered that of all the girls in town, he likes _you_."

"Not really. I keep trying to get him to see the error of his ways."

"Right." Veronica snorted in derision. "That 'reforming Angel' shtick hasn't worked in generations."

"It worked for you, didn't it?"

"What?!" Veronica glared at the dangerous harpy in the seat beside her, who didn't look nearly contrite enough, having been busted cheating. "NO. I didn't _reform_ Logan!" The suggestion that the most heart broken person she'd ever known had casually broken hearts himself made her so angry she sputtered as she repeated what she'd told Weevil all those years ago. "_You don't know anything!"_

"You're right. I don't know anything. I shouldn't be tossing around accusations without any evidence. And neither should you."

"Oh! Oh, I have no evidence, now? Here's what I know; my friend is crazy about a girl who can hardly wait for his plane to lift off before she high tails it to brunch with a blond haired, blue eyed God. _I saw_ _you together._ Are you going to try to tell me you're just study buddies? _You go to different Universities._ As for your 'I keep trying to get him to see the error of his ways' crap, since when does the U of M send missionaries to St. Thomas? Isn't that ass backward?"

"Jeff's crazy about me?" Bryn ignored the bulk of Veronica's rant and zeroed in on what interested her.

Veronica blinked at the appalling cluelessness of her passenger. Jeff was_ so much better_ off without her. "He won't be when I tell him what I saw today!"

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."Bryn said, mildly.

"Are you going to threaten me now?" Veronica couldn't help but smiling. "I wouldn't do _that_ if I were _you."_

"Jeez." Bryn rolled her eyes. "Don't make a federal case out of it."

"It _is_ a federal offense to threaten a government agent."

"What? We're just two girls, talking about boys."

Having reached the exit to Bryn's neighborhood, Veronica got off the highway and pulled over. Throwing the Audi into park, she turned and faced the other girl.

"You haven't reacted to a single thing I've said today in a way that makes any sense." She said, her eyes narrowed. "That means that you are either the craziest, most narcissistic psycho bitch I've ever met or I'm missing a giant piece of this picture. Which is it?"

Bryn sighed, then reached into her purse and found her wallet. She opened it up, took out a small photo and handed it to Veronica.

"What the hell?" Veronica murmured. She was looking at a portrait of Bryn and five young men of varying ages gathered around a man in a Santa costume.

"We go every year, first thing the morning after Thanksgiving." Bryn said. "Me and my brothers."

Sure enough, there was Finbar, as dark eyed and olive skinned as his sister. Another of the boys was also dark but two of them were as blond as Vikings, including the blue eyed Adonis Bryn had been with earlier.

"I can't believe you actually thought I would cheat on Jeff!" Bryn finally broke out laughing. "Veronica! _JP's my brother!"_

Veronica gaped at the dark eyed, olive skinned brunette beside her. "How is that even possible?" she demanded, rather stupidly. "I mean, _no way!"_

"Way!" Bryn howled. "I can't believe you thought he was my _boyfriend! Yuuck!"_

"He looks nothing like you and Finbar!" Veronica pointed out.

"Yeah, he actually does," Bryn said. "People are fooled by the coloring but there's a pretty strong family resemblance, especially when you see us all together. That's Connor, JP, me, Dog, Dood and Finbar." Bryn pointed to each of her brothers in turn. Connor, Finbar and Bryn shared dark complexions but Dood was as glowing a blond as JP, although not as large.

"So," Veronica pointed to the lone freckled redhead. "Who's the milkman's kid?"

"Dog. Augustus." Bryn grinned. "We used to tell him that strangers left him on the front porch but they were coming back to get him some day. He never believed us but he cried anyway."

"That's mean." Veronica said but her mouth quirked up in appreciation, as she studied the photo. Despite the difference in coloring, there really was a striking family resemblance. She finally looked up at Bryn. "He's your brother?"

"Uh huh. Half the girls in high school wanted to be my friend just so they could sneak into his room and leave him notes. It was a drag."

"You mean finding out that people you thought liked you only tolerated you for your…connections?" Veronica nodded, adding under her breath "that is a drag."

"Oh, I always knew I wasn't one of the cool kids," Bryn shrugged, "but at least they were nice to me, even if it was only because of JP."

"He is _stunningly_ good looking." Veronica admitted.

"Whatever. All he cares about is hockey." With the wave of her hand, Bryn dismissed the subject of her handsome brother. "The bottom line is; _I'm not cheating on Jeff_. Why in the world would you assume I'm going to dump him?"

"I just…he doesn't seem like your type."

"You don't have any brothers, do you?" Bryn asked, then continued without waiting for an answer. "I grew up surrounded by stupid boys; they fight all the time and they smell bad. I'm the last girl in the world who would fall for some empty headed pretty boy."

"You're telling me since your brothers are big and gorgeous; you're attracted to the skinny, runty type?"

"Jeff isn't skinny and runty." Bryn protested. "He's smart and charming."

"Seriously?" Veronica couldn't help laughing. "I don't get it. You have _nothing_ in common."

"You don't know him very well," Bryn sighed.

"I think I do!"

"And you don't know me at all."

"Enlighten me." Veronica raised an eyebrow.

"Are you asking me _my intentions_?" Bryn laughed.

"Yes." Veronica did not. Bryn didn't know her well enough to be intimidated by her stony glare.

"I don't have any! We've only known each other two months." Bryn said. Veronica merely raised her eyebrows, expectantly. Bryn took a deep breath and began: "Jeff caught my attention the day we met because he was nice, well mannered and friendly without trying too hard." She sighed nostalgically. "He had none of the obnoxious swagger that guys seem to think is irresistible."

"No?" Veronica chuckled, wryly. "That wasn't _my_ first impression."

"I think your first impression of him was as off base as his first impression of you." Bryn pointed out.

"Actually, it took him about two years to even _make_ an impression on me," Veronica admitted. "He thought I was a gold digging whore and a plagiarist."

"Well, see? You're not a plagiarist, are you?"

"No, and I proved it! Wait. Did you just call me a gold digging whore?" Veronica asked, beginning to like Bryn, despite herself.

"Yes, but only because you called me a psycho bitch, _twice_." Bryn said.

"De nada," Veronica shrugged it off. "I've been called much worse, believe me."

"Oh, I do." Bryn said, firmly. Veronica narrowed her eyes at her, determined not to laugh.

"I_ like_ being with Jeff." Bryn went on, the color rising in her cheeks. "He's smart, funny, sharp and perfectly at ease with who he is. He makes it easy for me to be who _I_ am."

"Because it's been so hard to be a smart, funny, hot chick?" Veronica snorted.

"Has it always been easy for you?" Bryn asked.

"Damn." Veronica frowned. "You do cut right through the bullshit, don't you?"

"Like Jeff does?"

"I'm beginning to see similarities." Veronica acquiesced.

"You'd be surprised." Bryn said, cryptically.

"I'm already surprised." Veronica admitted, starting the car up again. "You know; you didn't have to tell me anything."

"That would have made for an awkward car ride home." Bryn pointed out. "Besides, if I'd tried to take the fifth, I was afraid you would have me shipped to Gitmo."

"_Could_ this ride have been more awkward?" Veronica asked, laughing. "As for Gitmo; I still might."

"I could handle it. Couldn't be any worse than the kitchen when the guys come in after playing boot hockey all day." Bryn rolled her eyes. "The smell is indescribable."

"What's boot hockey?"

"I'll show you someday." Bryn said. "Turn this way. I'm actually going to have you drop me at my Grandma's. We're going to carve pumpkins this afternoon. Wanna come? There'll be cookies. And homemade cocoa."

"I…" Veronica flushed, slightly embarrassed by how great that sounded. "Your Grandma doesn't want a stranger horning in on pumpkin carving with you."

"Oh, it's not just me." Bryn assured her. "A bunch of the cousins will be there and probably lots of friends. It's fun; you should come. Believe me; with my Grandma, 'the more the merrier' isn't just a saying, it's a way of life."

Veronica looked at Bryn. "Why are you being so nice to me? I picked you up just to read you the riot act and I yelled at you all the way here. I called you a psycho bitch, _twice_."

"Yeah, you did." Bryn nodded.

"So?" Veronica waited.

"You don't fool me, you know." Bryn said with a smile.

"What do you mean?" Veronica demanded. "I was serious!"

"You never miss an opportunity to talk smack about Jeff but I'm onto you, now. I think it's sweet that you're so protective of him."

"Me? Protective of Jeff?" Veronica scoffed. "Never."

"Please. You would have _annihilated_ me if you thought I was going to hurt him. I have brothers; I recognize sororital behavior when I see it."

"W_hat _behavior?"

"Oh, what; 'fraternal' can be a word but 'sororital' can't?" Bryn protested. "That's _bogus_."

"I believe," Veronica pulled her mouth down thoughtfully, "That the term you're looking for is 'bitch cakes'."

* * *

Madison Sinclair adjusted her dress as she made her way down the port side promenade of the yacht. Japanese lanterns lit the deck and she smiled at several other guests as she reached the party going full swing on the stern deck.

"Here you go." Shelley appeared out of nowhere with a large drink in each hand, one of which she pressed on her friend. "I'm sure you need it."

"Thanks." Madison rolled her eyes and tipped back the appletini. "God, that's better. How about you? Having fun?"

"I always have fun." Shelley said as she eyed the crowd of well dressed, upscale men and skinny, slinky women. "I think we've been going about this all wrong."

"What do you mean?" Madison waved over a waiter with fresh drinks.

"The young guys take us for granted. You can have all the fun you want at a party like this but they never call. Now the old guys…" She smiled at a knot of middle aged men who were ogling them. "They haven't seen a set of feathers as fresh as ours in decades. They'd be grateful."

"Hmm." Madison sipped her new drink and threw a calculating look at the older men scattered across the deck. Their jackets were less flashy or cutting edge than the younger men but all were impeccably tailored and of the finest fabrics. Their jewelry was understated but expensive. Their shoes may not be brand new but they were most likely custom made.

"They wouldn't just drag you back to a state room for twenty minutes and call it a date. Plus, they've got all the _real _money." Shelley pointed out."And they're expereinced. They know how the equipment works, even if it is a little...droopy."

"Yuck." Madison rendered her decision. She turned away from the older gents and leaned on the rail, looking at the lights of the city.

"Hey, the world isn't perfect_."_ Shelley sighed. "Young hotties with their own fortunes don't grow on trees."

"Maybe not." Madison said, watching a knot of people tumble out of the enormous Bentley that had pulled up to the dock. "But maybe my ship just came in."

To be Continued...


End file.
